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Updated: Aug 22, 2025
MRI-guided dmPFC-rTMS as a Treatment for Treatment-resistant Major Depressive Disorder
Published on: August 11, 2015
Cognitive-affective processes and suicidality in response to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for
Alex R Terpstra1, Fidel Vila-Rodriguez2, Joelle LeMoult1
1Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Background:
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) can elicit 45-55 % response rates and may alleviate suicidality symptoms in treatment resistant depression (TRD). Blunted anticipatory reward sensitivity and negatively biased self-referential processing may predict trajectories of depressive and suicidality symptoms in rTMS for TRD and be modulated during treatment.
Methods:
Fifty-five individuals with TRD received four weeks of low-frequency rTMS applied to the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (LFR-rTMS) and were followed until 17 weeks post-baseline. Participants completed behavioral measures of anticipatory reward sensitivity and self-referential processing at baseline and five weeks post-baseline (approximately one-week post-treatment). We examined whether baseline anticipatory reward sensitivity and self-referential processing predicted trajectories of depressive and suicidality symptoms from baseline to follow-up and whether these cognitive-affective variables showed change from baseline to week five.
Results:
Anticipatory reward sensitivity and negative self-referential encoding at baseline were associated with higher overall depressive symptoms and suicidality from baseline to 17 weeks post-baseline. At week five, participants self-attributed a higher number of positive traits and a lower number of negative traits and had a lesser tendency to remember negative relative to positive traits they had self-attributed, compared to baseline.
Limitations:
The specificity of these results to LFR-rTMS is unknown in the absence of a comparison group, and our relatively small sample size precluded the interpretation of null results.
Conclusions:
Baseline blunted anticipatory reward sensitivity and negative biases in self-referential processing may be risk factors for higher depressive symptoms and suicidality during and after LFR-rTMS, and LFR-rTMS may modulate self-referential processing.
