Cognitive models posit that social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with and maintained by attentional bias (AB) for
social threat. However, over the last years, it has been suggested that AB in SAD may result from a decreased activation of
the left prefrontal cortex, and particularly of its dorsolateral part (dlPFC). Accordingly, a transient increase of neural activity
within the left dlPFC via non-invasive brain stimulation decreases AB in non-anxious control participants. Yet, none of
these studies focused on SAD. This is especially unfortunate as SAD constitutes the main target for which a genuine reduction
of AB may be most appropriate. In this experiment, we sought to investigate the causal influence of left dlPFC neuromodulation
on AB among 19 female individuals with a DSM-5 diagnosis of SAD. We adopted a double-blind within-subject
protocol in which we delivered a single-session of anodal versus sham transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) over
the left dlPFC during the completion of a probe discrimination task assessing AB. Consistent with our hypothesis, participants
demonstrated a significant decrease in AB during the anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC relative to the sham stimulation.
These findings value tDCS as an innovative procedure to gain new insight into the underlying mechanisms of SAD.