Magnetic stimulation therapy used for depression treatment is effective by correcting abnormal flow of signals in the brain
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Treatment (Magnetic Stimulation Treat), which stimulates the brain by applying strong magnetic pulses to the scalp, is a treatment that provides rapid symptom relief for severe depression that has not been very effective with standard treatments. :TMS)'. Until now, it wasn't known exactly how TMS dissipated the symptoms of depression, but a study by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine has revealed why.
Targeted neurostimulation reverses a spatiotemporal biomarker of treatment-resistant depression | PNAS
Researchers treat depression by reversing brain signals traveling the wrong way | News Center | Stanford Medicine
The research is by Anish Mitra of Stanford University and Mark Reichl of the University of Washington, and the paper is published in the May 15, 2023 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
``The prevailing hypothesis about how TMS works is that it may change the flow of neural activity in the brain,'' Mitra said. I wanted to try it,” he says.
Mr. Mitra had already developed a mathematical tool for analyzing
In research, Stanford neuromodulation therapy (SNT ) was used. ``It's the perfect test to see if TMS has the power to change the flow of signals in the brain,'' Mitra said.
The subjects were 33 patients diagnosed with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder. Of these, 23 received SNT treatment and 10 received sham treatment that mimicked SNT but did not involve magnetic stimulation. The research team compared the data from 33 people with data from 85 healthy controls without depression.
The researchers looked at the data and found that in healthy people, the anterior insular cortex sends signals to the anterior cingulate cortex . ``We believe that the anterior cingulate cortex receives information about the body, such as heart rate and temperature, and determines how we feel based on these signals,'' Mitra said.
However, in three out of four depressed patients, the signal flow was reversed, with the anterior cingulate cortex sending signals to the anterior insular cortex. The higher the severity, the higher the percentage of signals flowing in the wrong direction.
'It's like you've already decided how you're going to feel, and then you filter out what you perceive, so it's kind of like mood first,' Mitra said of the state. Even if you are very happy, you suddenly feel no joy at all, which is consistent with the view of many psychiatrists on depression.'
After receiving SNT treatment, the flow of signals in the brain returned to normal within a week, and at the same time, the depressive symptoms disappeared.
``It is the first time in psychiatry that the flow of signals between two brain regions predicts changes in clinical symptoms,'' said Nolan Williams, who worked on the study.
Williams said these abnormalities in signal flow are not seen in all depressed patients and may be a rare symptom, but they serve as important biomarkers for triaging depression treatment. said it could be done. ``Looking for this biomarker when you find someone with severe depression can help you determine how likely they are to respond to SNT treatment,'' Mitra said.
The research team plans to replicate this study in a larger patient group. We also hope that others will use this analytical technique to uncover more clues about the direction of brain activity hidden in fMRI data.
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