Deep-TMS Reduces Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia

the Psychiatry Advisor take:

Preliminary research has suggested that deep-transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) may be an effective noninvasive therapy to treat negative symptoms and cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia -- important but often inadequately controlled aspects of the disease.

So Yechiel Levkovitz, MD, director of the Emotion-Cognition Research Center, Shalvata Mental Health Care Center in Hod-Hasharon, Israel, and colleagues, conducted the first double-blind, randomized sham-controlled study to examine the feasibility and efficacy of deep-TMS as add-on treatment in 30 patients.

One month after treatment, daily H1 deep-TMS significantly reduced negative symptoms and cognitive deficits in the TMS group but not the control group, the researchers found.