LEFT and RIGHT-handed people with treatment-resistant depression improve equally with rTMS
Interestingly, handedness (i.e., whether an individual is right or left handed) might indicate which side of the brain/body is more dominant. Potentially, this could affect the intensity of stimulation that left or right-handed people need. Additionally, rTMS is delivered to the left side of an individual’s head. This region of the brain controls the right side of your body — raising the question as to whether rTMS is equally effective for left and right-handed people. This could have important impacts for depression treatment.
Towards Competency-Based Medical Education in Neurostimulation
Competency-based medical education (CBME) is an emerging model of training for medical students. Instead of relying simply on the time spent in residency, CBME focuses on having residents achieve necessary skills such that they would be able to perform competently (successfully) and independently in their selected specialties. A group of residents, academic faculty, and clinical faculty at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have come together to create a roadmap as to how to apply CBME specifically to interventional psychiatry – which includes the practice of electroconvulsive therapy and rTMS.
Who may be most likely to benefit from repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)?
Even though repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is largely effective at treating depression even for those who do not respond to antidepressants, there is still a fraction of individuals who do not improve with rTMS. Predicting who may respond best to rTMS may help clinicians and patients make better choices as to what treatments to pursue, with the ultimate hope to better treat depression. Trevizol et al. (2020) used data from a clinical trial run by the NINET Lab at UBC called THREE-D to determine if there are characteristics that can help predict whether someone would benefit from rTMS.
Can accelerated rTMS (iTBS) be used in place of ECT with severely depressed patients to achieve the same results?
Paper authors: Michelle Goodman, Alisson Trevizol, Gerasimos Konstantinou, David Boivin-Lafleur, Ram Brender, Jonathan Downar, Tyler Kaster, Yuliya Knyahnytska, Fidel Vila-Rodriguez, Daphne Voineskos, Zafiris Daskalakis, Daniel Blumberger Year of paper publication: 2025 Post authors: Alice Erchov, Sarah Kesler, Fidel Vila-Rodriguez Download the research article: Goodman et al. (2025) Extended course accelerated intermittent theta burst stimulation as […]
Early symptom improvement at 10 sessions as a predictor of rTMS treatment outcome in major depression
Not improving after investing time, money, and energy into a treatment for depression is, understandably, difficult. Being able to predict who will respond to what treatment would help clinicians and patients personalize treatment approaches. This could help reduce these frustrations and, hopefully, more effectively treat depression. This paper looked at whether early symptom improvement would be able to reliably predict whether someone will respond to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS).
Age-Related Changes in Brain Excitability in Healthy Humans
It may be well-known that aging affects nearly every part of our lives – both good and bad. In particular, there have been a growing number of studies that look to see how aging impacts our brain, which is a field of research capable of driving our idea of what is “successful” aging, and how we might be able to support people’s health across the lifespan. Ferrari et al. (2017) use neurophysiological techniques to see how the brain responds to rTMS to investigate this topic.
Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Depression
Depression is known to cause difficulty in daily functioning, self-esteem, sleep, and emotions. With all the research we’ve done with depression, guidelines are needed to organize this information into comprehensible and universal standards of care, informed by our most up-to-date understanding of diagnosis and treatment. The guideline in question comes from India in 2017 and is a keystone because it was the first to officially recommend the use of neuromodulatory treatments (specifically, electroconvulsive therapy; ECT) in severe cases of depression.
Differential symptom cluster responses to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment in depression
Everyone experiences depression differently. Few studies have looked at how individual symptoms change across treatment, and how they might be related. Specifically, this study was interested in individuals with treatment-resistant depression and how they respond to new, effective repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatments (or the shortened version, iTBS).
Evaluation of the effects of rTMS on self-reported quality of life and disability in treatment-resistant depression: A THREE-D study
Depression doesn’t just affect mood. It also impacts an individual’s ability to function in daily life. This study explored how the use of rTMS and iTBS as new, safe, non-invasive, and effective treatment(s) for treatment-resistant depression affected individuals’ quality of life and levels of disability.
Understanding the Common Side Effect of Pain During Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Treatment
The symptoms of depression are bad enough without enduring side effects from the medications used to treat them. Newer treatments without drugs include repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a non-invasive procedure where patients receive a series of short magnetic pulses over the scalp to stimulate the nerve cells of the brain. Daily 40-minute treatments using a protocol called high-frequency stimulation (HF) are delivered for 6 weeks, however this can be shortened to daily 3-minute treatments using a protocol called intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS).