TORONTO, April 26, 2018 – In the largest study of its kind, a three-minute version of a brain stimulation treatment was shown to be just as effective as the standard 37-minute version for hard-to-treat depression.
These results were published in a new Canadian study in The Lancet co-led by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the University Health Network's Krembil Research Institute, in collaboration with the University of British Columbia.
The treatment is called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which is a form of treatment that uses magnetic field pulses to non-invasively stimulate a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is associated with mood regulation. The study compared standard rTMS treatment, which uses high frequency (10 Hz) brain stimulation for 37.5 minutes per session, with a newer form of rTMS called intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS), that mimics the brain's natural rhythms and takes just over three minutes per treatment.
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