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Updated: Jun 19, 2026
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Investigating Causal Brain-behavioral Relationships and their Time Course
Published on: July 18, 2014
MAGNITUDE: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Treatment-Resistant Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Randomized
Lavinia Rech1,2, Ricardo A Vivanco1,3, Ana Claudia Guersoni1,4
1ECPE Department-PPCR Program, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Abstract:
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a chronic psychiatric condition with a lifetime prevalence of 2-3%. It significantly burdens quality of life and is associated with substantial economic and disease burdens. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and high-dose selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are considered the first-line treatments for OCD. Approximately two-thirds of patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) exhibit inadequate responses to current standard therapies, thus lacking adequate therapy, resulting in a loss of quality of life and huge economic burdens. Repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS) is a non-invasive, safe, and well-tolerated intervention that modulates prefrontal cortical circuits involved in OCD. A previous systematic review explored the therapeutic effects of rTMS applied to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) area in patients with treatment-resistant OCD. It showed that the application of high-frequency and low-frequency (LF) rTMS to the dlPFC region yielded controversial post-treatment Y-BOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale) findings due to factors such as small sample sizes, short-term study durations, and variations in rTMS protocols.
Objectives:
Thus, we propose a theoretical protocol based on previous findings to assess better the effect of LF rTMS for treatment-resistant OCD patients.
Methods:
We will recruit patients with moderate to severe OCD and limited response to previous treatments from in- and outpatient clinics. We will use fMRI for precious localization of the right dlPFC and application of 1 Hz stimulation of in total 2000 pulses with three times 40 s inter-train intervals 5 days a week, in 6 consecutive weeks. The primary outcome will be the mean reduction in Y-BOCS at the end of this study.
Conclusions:
This study highlights rTMS's potential to reform OCD treatment, accentuate safety, accessibility, clinical integration, and future research foundations.
