Personalised brain stimulation helps treat those with depression

Medical researchers claim to have achieved a significant milestone in the treatment of depression, demonstrating the effectiveness of personalised transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) therapy. The new approach uses advanced brain imaging to tailor treatment to an individual’s unique brain anatomy and connectivity, offering hope to people who have had little success with other therapies.

TMS is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that targets specific areas of the brain to regulate neural activity associated with brain disorders. Unlike traditional TMS methods that stimulate a broad area, this personalised approach identifies the optimal stimulation site on the brain for each patient based on their own MRI scans.

Over the past three years, the team at QIMR Berghofer’s Clinical Brain Networks laboratory has treated individuals with depression by scanning their brains via MRI, then offering 20–30 stimulation treatments over several weeks. The results, as published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, have been described by the researchers as remarkable.

According to QIMR Berghofer neuroscientist Dr Luke Hearne, “Just over half of the patients reduced their symptoms by more than 50%, and around one-third achieved full remission. This is particularly exciting for people who have not responded to standard treatments like medication or talk therapy.” The study also revealed that patients with depression responded better than those with complex conditions such as bipolar depression or neurological disorders.

Hearne emphasised the importance of personalisation in improving outcomes, noting, “The brain is incredibly complex, and even millimetre-level adjustments in stimulation sites on the surface of the brain can make a significant difference to clinical outcomes. By tailoring TMS to each person’s unique brain structure, we’re seeing much better responses compared to traditional approaches.”

Hearne and his collaborators are keen to secure funding to begin randomised clinical trials for the treatment, with a view to making targeted TMS therapy available to people in rural and underserved communities.

Image credit: iStock.com/imaginima