TMS in Pregnancy – A pregnant woman with depression is in a difficult situation. In order to manage the depression, she might require antidepressant medication; however, seeing as the medication not only affects her but also the developing fetus, she may prefer to avoid medication. But if the depression goes untreated this will likely result…
The earliest accounts of depression were recorded in the second millennium BC in ancient Mesopotamia. However, the true nature of depressions eluded many scholars for a great number of years. But as medical science evolved a myriad set of treatments emerged. The treatments of past, from bloodletting, baths, and even local shamans, have all but…
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…
Historical Overview of TMS for Treatment-Resistant Depression An aspiring artist who apprenticed as a barber and then as a cobbler, Santiago Ramón y Cajal went on to become a world-class anatomist. In 1906, Ramón y Cajal won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his drawings of the neuron—spiny, arborous structures that conduct electrical impulses across…