0000000000407521
AUTHOR
Mark Thall
Correlation of cerebral blood flow and treatment effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in depressed patients.
The aims of this study were to: (1) assess the effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on brain activity in depressed patients as measured by single photon emission tomography (SPECT); (2) evaluate the predictive value of brain SPECT on the antidepressant efficacy of rTMS. Patients (n=17) received 1600 rTMS stimuli at a rate of 10 Hz, 5 days per week for 2 weeks to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Whole brain SPECT data were acquired using Tc99m-Bicisate. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was correlated with the % change in the 28-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale Score (Δ-HDRS) and a semiquantitative region of interest (ROI) analysis was conducted. Prio…
Inter- and intra-individual variability of paired-pulse curves with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
Objectives: Previous studies have evaluated the variability of motor thresholds (MTs) and amplitude of motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) within and across individuals. Here we evaluate the reproducibility and inter-hemispheric variability of measures of cortical excitability using the 'conventional' paired-pulse (PP) TMS technique. Methods: We studied PP curves of the left and right hemisphere in 10 healthy subjects on two separate days 2 weeks apart. The inter-stimulus intervals studied were 1, 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12 ms with the conditioning stimulus being 80% of the resting MT, and a single test stimulus producing MEPs of approximately 0.8 mV peak-to-pe…