Therapeutic Applications of TMS

Ever since its adoption as a research tool, the question has been posed if rTMS could be used to treat brain disease or improve functional deficits. Early evidence that trains of stimuli delivered to the motor cortex could produce minutes of increased [2] or decreased [1, 3] corticospinal hyperexcitability provided the impetus for studies aimed at modulating cortical tone. A great number of studies have been conducted with TMS and rTMS to the evaluate the efficacy of the procedure as a therapeutic for both psychiatric disorders and motor disorders.

Conditions that have been reported to be influenced by rTMS are listed below.

Psychiatric Disorders: depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia [4]

Motor Disorders: Parkinson's disease, task-related dystonia (writer's cramp) and tic disorder, epilepsy and related disorders [4]

[1] Chen R, Classen J, Gerloff C, Celnik P, Wassermann EM, Hallett M, Cohen LG. Depression of motor cortex excitability by low-frequency transcranial magnetic stimulation. Neurology 1997;48:1398±1403.

[2] Pascual-Leone A, Valls-Sole J, Wassermann EM, Hallett M. Responses to rapid-rate transcranial stimulation of the human motor cortex. Brain 1994a;117:847±858.

[3] Wassermann EM, Grafman J, Berry C, Hollnagel C, Wild K, Clark K, Hallett M. Use and safety of a new repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulator. Electroenceph clin Neurophysiol 1996a;101:412±417.

[4] Eric M. Wassermanna, Sarah H. Lisanby. Therapeutic application of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation: a review. Clinical Neurophysiology 112 (2001) 1367-1377