Not all patients with depression respond to medication. Two recently published studies provide additional information on how an alternative treatment, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), could be further enhanced. TMS differs from electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which is also used to treat depression.
Researchers from the University of Helsinki and Stanford University investigated which factors in targeting TMS influence the brain's electrical responses. They examined the behavior of a specific electrophysiological marker. This marker could potentially be used as a biomarker in the future to measure the efficacy of TMS treatment and thus help target and tailor the therapy.
Magnetic stimulation is an effective treatment for patients whose depression is not alleviated by medication. However, currently, about half of these patients do not receive significant help from TMS. The biomarker we studied may help predict who will benefit from the therapy.
In the future, it may also be possible to tailor the treatment individually." Juha Gogulski, postdoctoral researcher from Stanford, University of Helsinki and Aalto University The first study addressed an electrophysiological marker that describes cortical excitability and the sources of error affecting its measurement. Researchers studied healthy subjects to determine how magnetic stimulation targeted to the prefrontal cortex and the angle of the stimulation coil affected cortical excitability, that is, the responses measured o.