Introduction
aggression, depression, sadness, anxiety
CORTEX, ADVERSE EFFECT
As social beings, humans rely on group life for their health and well-being, and being accepted into a social group is an important goal of human striving [Working memory (WM) refers to the structures and processes used to temporarily store and manipulate information in the face of ongoing processing and distraction [The mechanism underlying the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM performance is mainly understood from the perspective of limited cognitive resources. As a typical negative social experience, social exclusion has been proved to induce negative emotions such as anxiety, sadness and depression [Given the importance of working memory and pervasiveness of social exclusion, it is essential to find a potential solution to alleviate the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM performance. However, few studies have focused on this issue so far, and our study aimed to explore this issue by considering the neural intervention. Neuroimaging studies have indicated that the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) exhibits increased activity in response to social exclusion [In sum, this study aimed to explore the emotional mechanism underlying the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM performance and investigate the potential solution of neural intervention to alleviate this impairment. To this end, we manipulated social exclusion among the participants with the typical Cyberball paradigm and used N-back task to assess their WM performance. Meanwhile, we applied the anodal (vs sham) tDCS over the rVLPFC during the Cyberball task. Based on the findings from previous studies that (1) social exclusion would induce negative emotion (e.g., anxiety, sadness, depression), and (2) negative emotion would impair WM performance, we hypothesized that negative emotions induced by social exclusion mediate the relationship between social exclusion and WM performance. Besides, according to the findings from previous studies that anodal stimulation over the rVLPFC would reduce the negative emotion responses and behavior aggression elicited by social exclusion, we further hypothesized that anodal stimulation over the rVLPFC would also alleviate the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM performance by reducing negative emotion.