Research into optimal TMS treatment parameters for a given disorder is ongoing. The paper we will consider here, by Kozel and colleagues, looks at frequency of pulse delivery, specifically low versus high frequency TMS in the treatment of PTSD. The effect TMS has on the brain is contingent upon many factors – frequency being one of them. Broadly speaking, TMS is…
A recent study from August had originally introduced the idea that ketamine may act like an opioid. This was reinforced by a small study of 7 patients that showed that patients who received naltrexone (a medication that blocks the effects of opioids and is also used to treat alcohol dependence) before their ketamine infusion felt…
“I received ketamine anesthesia during ECT treatment: Will that help treat my depression?” Long before ketamine was used in low doses to treat refractory depression, it was (and still is!) a very a widely used anesthetic agent. The World Health Organization (WHO) even lists ketamine as an “essential medicine,” and among the safest and…
Of all the people that experience a major depressive episode for the first time, depression will recur in about half of them. Several years may pass before the depression recurs or it may come back in as little as a couple of weeks. Depression may recur only once or multiple times over the course of…
Elderly Depression- Over recent years, there has been a boom in scientific studies regarding the use of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression. These studies have shown time and time again that ketamine is a powerful and rapid anti-depressant that can significantly decrease suicidal thoughts and improve depressive symptoms. These studies and the scientific community urge strict…
The initial response to the question – What effect does transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) have on cognitive performance? – was that TMS would cause neurons to fire at random, disrupting normal cognitive function. So, when reports started cropping up suggesting that TMS improves cognitive performance, both researchers and clinicians alike were quite taken aback. In…
Around the time transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was approved by the FDA in 2008, a few studies published findings concerning which individual patient characteristics might be associated with a robust antidepressant response to TMS. One such study (Fregni et al.) found that age was a statistically significant variable; that TMS produces a greater antidepressant effect…
A new study released in October in Molecular Psychiatry explored what the optimal ketamine dose is for its use as an antidepressant. Most studies that have looked at ketamine’s ability to rapidly reduce depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation used 0.5mg/kg over 40 minutes as the target dose, and lower (ex: 0.1mg/kg) or higher (1.0mg/kg) doses…
Since the early 1990s, the United States has been stricken with a methamphetamine epidemic. Data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reveals that during 2016 the prevalence of methamphetamine among people ages 12 or older was 0.5 percent. This means approximately 1.5 million people ages 12 or older used methamphetamine in…
On August 29th, The American Journal of Psychiatry published a research study out of Stanford University that aimed to explain the relationship between ketamine and the opioid pathway in the brain. Low-dose ketamine has been known to alleviate depressive symptoms for years, but researchers aren’t sure exactly how it works to ease depression. The main…