The neural correlates of flow experience explored with transcranial direct current stimulation

Martin Ulrich, Johannes Niemann, Markus Boland, Thomas Kammer, Filip Niemann, Georg Grön

The experience of flow ensues when humans engage in a demanding task while task demands are balanced with the individual's level of skill or ability. Here, we further tested the hypothesis that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) plays a causal role in mediating flow experience using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to interfere with MPFC's deactivation evoked by a flow paradigm and measured by magnetic resonance (MR)-based perfusion imaging. In a balanced, within-subjects repeated measure design, three treatments of tDCS (sham, anodal, cathodal) were applied in a sample of 22 healthy male participants. tDCS-modulatory effects on flow-specific regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) and subjective flow experience significantly depended on participants' baseline level of flow experience during sham tDCS. Those participants with lower-flow experience during sham tDCS (LF) benefitted from tDCS, particularly from the anodal polarity, whereas both active treatments did not substantially affect subjects with relatively higher baseline flow experience (HF). Functionally, in LF subjects, relative deactivation of the right amygdala got more pronounced under anodal and cathodal tDCS, and changed inconsistently in HF subjects. Inter-individual regression analyses of rCBF data suggested that involvement of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex appears crucial for affecting the response pattern in the right amygdala and can be modulated by tDCS. Present data support the notion that valuable insights into the neural mechanism of flow can be obtained using tDCS. However, a clearer understanding of tDCS' baseline dependency in terms of individual variations in brain connectivity states appears a necessary prerequisite to exploit this technique further.