Brain Stimul
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Clinical Trial
Feasibility, safety and efficacy of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation in chronic tinnitus: an open pilot study.
Vagus nerve stimulation represents an established treatment strategy for epilepsy and affective disorders. Recently, positive effects were also shown in animals and humans with tinnitus. Here we report the results of an open pilot study exploring feasibility, safety and efficacy of tVNS in the treatment of chronic tinnitus. ⋯ Our data demonstrate the feasibility of tVNS over a period of 6 months. There was no clinically relevant improvement of tinnitus complaints. Our data suggest tVNS to be considered safe in patients without a history of cardiac disease.
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Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN DBS) reduces Parkinson disease (PD) motor symptoms but has unexplained, variable effects on mood. ⋯ PD participants diagnosed with current mood or anxiety disorders are more sensitive to STN DBS-induced effects on mood, possibly indicating altered basal ganglia circuitry in this group.
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Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is regarded as an effective way to treat refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Little is known about the effects of DBS cessation following a longer period of stimulation. ⋯ Acute DBS cessation causes a relapse of obsessions and compulsions and a rebound of anxiety and depression. Additionally, improvements on QoL disappear.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) improves facial affect recognition in schizophrenia.
Facial affect recognition, a basic building block of social cognition, is often impaired in schizophrenia. Poor facial affect recognition is closely related to poor functional outcome; however, neither social cognitive impairments nor functional outcome are sufficiently improved by antipsychotic drug treatment alone. Adjunctive repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been shown to enhance cognitive functioning in both healthy individuals and in people with neuropsychiatric disorders and to ameliorate clinical symptoms in psychiatric disorders, but its effects on social cognitive impairments in schizophrenia have not yet been studied. Therefore, we evaluated the effects of sham-controlled rTMS on facial affect recognition in patients with chronic schizophrenia. ⋯ Our results indicate that prefrontal 10 Hz rTMS stimulation may help to ameliorate impaired facial affect recognition in schizophrenia.