Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access originally published online on October 27, 2005
Schizophrenia Bulletin 2006 32(3):556-561; doi:10.1093/schbul/sbj020
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Therapeutic Effects of Individualized Alpha Frequency Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (
TMS) on the Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia
2 Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine
1To whom correspondence should be addressed; e-mail: yjin{at}uci.edu.
Previous research in clinical electroencephalography (EEG) has demonstrated that reduction of alpha frequency (813 Hz) EEG activity may have particular relevance to the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) was utilized to investigate this relationship by assessing the therapeutic effects of stimulation set individually at each subject's peak alpha frequency (
TMS). Twenty-seven subjects, with predominantly negative symptom schizophrenia, received 2 weeks of daily treatment with either
TMS, 3 Hz, 20 Hz, or sham stimulation bilaterally over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Individualized
TMS demonstrated a significantly larger (F 3,33 = 4.7, p = .007) therapeutic effect (29.6% reduction in negative symptoms) than the other 3 conditions (< 9%). Furthermore, these clinical improvements were found to be highly correlated (r = 0.86, p = .001) with increases (34%) in frontal alpha amplitude following
TMS. These results affirm that the resonant features of alpha frequency EEG play an important role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and merit further investigation as a particularly efficacious frequency for rTMS treatments.
Keywords: alpha rhythm /
TMS / schizophrenia / EEG / transcranial magnetic stimulation