Not all patients with depression respond to medication. Two recently published studies provide additional information on how an alternative treatment, transcranial magnetic stimulation , could be further enhanced. Researchers developed more precise methods that could, in the future, help to develop individually tailored magnetic stimulation therapies for 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.
The second study dealt with the reliability of the same electrophysiological marker in the prefrontal cortex. The study revealed that the most significant factor affecting reliability was the stimulation site. According to Gogulski, what makes the new studies significant is that this detailed systematic mapping of the electrical responses of the prefrontal cortex and their reliability has not been done before. The researchers hope that in the future, the effectiveness of TMS therapy can be monitored by measuring the brain's electrical responses during treatment. Based on these measurements, it might be possible to fine-tune the stimulation if necessary, even during the treatment.