Brain Stimul
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) improves facial affect recognition in schizophrenia.
Facial affect recognition, a basic building block of social cognition, is often impaired in schizophrenia. Poor facial affect recognition is closely related to poor functional outcome; however, neither social cognitive impairments nor functional outcome are sufficiently improved by antipsychotic drug treatment alone. Adjunctive repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been shown to enhance cognitive functioning in both healthy individuals and in people with neuropsychiatric disorders and to ameliorate clinical symptoms in psychiatric disorders, but its effects on social cognitive impairments in schizophrenia have not yet been studied. Therefore, we evaluated the effects of sham-controlled rTMS on facial affect recognition in patients with chronic schizophrenia. ⋯ Our results indicate that prefrontal 10 Hz rTMS stimulation may help to ameliorate impaired facial affect recognition in schizophrenia.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Evidence for a role of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in controlling stimulus-response integration: a transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) study.
Acting coherently upon stimuli requires some kind of integration of stimulus and response features across various distinct cortical feature maps (one aspect of the binding problem). Although the process of feature binding proper seems rather automatic, recent studies revealed that the management of stimulus-response bindings is less efficient in populations with impaired cognitive-control processes. ⋯ This finding provides empirical support for a role of the right DLPFC in feature-binding management, which might consist in preventing the stimulus-induced activation of previously created, but now task-irrelevant, episodic bindings. From a methodological perspective, the finding may suggest that tDCS could be used as a temporary, reversible "brain lesion" generator in healthy subjects, enabling experimental investigation of how the brain works.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
A two-site pilot randomized 3 day trial of high dose left prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for suicidal inpatients.
Suicide attempts and completed suicides are common, yet there are no proven acute medication or device treatments for treating a suicidal crisis. Repeated daily left prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for 4-6 weeks is a new FDA-approved treatment for acute depression. Some open-label rTMS studies have found rapid reductions in suicidality. ⋯ Delivering high doses of left prefrontal rTMS over three days (54,000 stimuli) to suicidal inpatients is possible and safe, with few side effects and no worsening of suicidal thinking. The suggestions of a rapid anti-suicide effect (day 1 SSI data, Visual Analogue Scale data over the 3 days) need to be tested for replication in a larger sample.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Targeting chronic recurrent low back pain from the top-down and the bottom-up: a combined transcranial direct current stimulation and peripheral electrical stimulation intervention.
Mechanisms such as neural sensitization and maladaptive cortical organization provide novel targets for therapy in chronic recurrent low back pain (CLBP). ⋯ Our data suggest a combined tDCS/PES intervention more effectively improves CLBP symptoms and mechanisms of cortical organization and sensitization, than either intervention applied alone or a sham control.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Variability in response to transcranial direct current stimulation of the motor cortex.
Responses to a number of different plasticity-inducing brain stimulation protocols are highly variable. However there is little data available on the variability of response to transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS). ⋯ The large variability in response to these TDCS protocols is in line with similar studies using other forms of non-invasive brain stimulation. The effects highlight the need to develop more robust protocols, and understand the individual factors that determine responsiveness.