Left dorso-lateral repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation affects cortical excitability and functional connectivity, but does not impair cognition in major depression.

Purpose: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been used for over a decade to investigate cortical function. More recently, it has been employed to treat conditions such as major depression. This study was designed to explore the effects of differential treatment parameters, such as stimulation frequency.

The effects of noradrenergic re-uptake inhibition on memory encoding in man.

Rationale: Animal and human evidence implicate the central noradrenergic system in the process of memory modulation for emotional material. Blockade of the beta-adrenergic system in humans has been shown to result in decreased recall and recognition memory performance, relative to placebo, for the emotional elements of a series of slides accompanied by a narrative. Stimulation of the noradrenergic system with yohimbine has also been shown to result in increased recall and recognition performance relative to placebo for the same stimulus materials.

Right and left prefrontal transcranial magnetic stimulation at 1 Hz does not affect mood in healthy volunteers.

Background: Prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been used to induce side-specific mood changes in volunteers and patients. To clarify inconsistencies between reports that used different stimulation frequencies, we conducted a controlled study with a low (1 Hz) frequency, comparing left with right-sided stimulation

Methods: Nineteen healthy volunteers received randomised left or right prefrontal rTMS at a frequency of 1 Hz and 100% of motor threshold in two sessions two weeks apart.

Results: There were significant improvements with TMS for performance in the digit symbol substitution and verbal fluency tests, but no change of mood on a number of measures.