Stimulating the brain with magnetic fields may reduce symptoms of depression in some people, but scientists aren’t exactly sure why it works. New research provides some insight: This process reverses brain signals that go wrong.
This misdirected flow of neural activity could one day be used as a diagnostic tool for depression, the researchers said.
formally known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatments are non-invasive, customizable to each patient, and have regulatory approval. Knowing exactly how your TMS works should help you make it even better.
“The leading hypothesis is that TMS may alter the flow of neural activity in the brain.” To tell Anish Mitra, a psychiatrist and behavioral scientist at Stanford University in California. “But to be honest, I was pretty skeptical. I wanted to try it.”
To do so, the researchers introduced and analyzed a special mathematical approach. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans showed precise timing of activity in the brain, which also revealed the direction of neural signals.
The study included patients diagnosed with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder.some were given 10 Stanford neuromodulation therapy A form of TMS (SNT) and 10 others received a placebo-style treatment mimicking SNT without any actual magnetic stimulation.
Brain scans of all depressed participants were also compared to brain scans of 102 healthy controls who had not been diagnosed with depression, allowing the researchers to see any differences. Her 16 of these healthy controls were scanned using a different scanner and with different scan her parameters than the other 85 of her.
One area stood out. The forejima is a part of the brain known to receive biometric signals (such as heart rate) from the body and send signals to parts of the brain involved in processing emotions. cingulate cortex.
In three-quarters of depressed patients, signals traveled in the opposite direction, from emotion processing area to area. Maejima. Moreover, the higher the level of depression, the more signals are misdirected.
“What we’ve seen is that in a relationship who is the sender and who is the receiver seems to be very important in terms of whether someone is depressed.” To tell Mitra.
“It’s as if you’ve already decided how you’re going to feel and everything you’re feeling is filtered through that filter. Mood has become the number one thing.”
It matches what we know about depression. Normally, the pleasurable activity reported by the maejima is overridden by dominant signals from the parts of the brain that set the mood, rather than acting in the other direction.
In the majority of depressed patients, one week of SNT treatment was sufficient for brain signals to re-route.confirm previous result It shows the potential of this particular treatment.
Although this disrupted brain activity isn’t present in all depressed patients, the researchers say SNT could help identify people who can help. Further analysis may reveal more about how brain signaling is altered in depressed patients.
It’s unclear how permanent this modification of brain signals is, and the team hopes to test it on more people. But it’s an important insight into how depression affects the wiring of the brain, made possible by analyzing the scans in greater detail than ever before.
“Behavioral conditions such as depression have been difficult to image because, unlike obvious brain lesions, the relationships between different parts of the brain are subtle.” To tell “It’s a very common problem,” says neurologist Marcus Reichl of the University of Washington in St. Louis, Missouri.
“It is very encouraging that current technology is approaching the complexity of the problems we are trying to understand.”
This research PNAS.
