Effects of bilateral prefrontal rTMS on brain activation during social-emotional evaluation in schizophrenia: A double-blind, randomized, exploratory study.

This exploratory study reports on the effects of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) on (prefrontal) brain activity changes during ambiguous emotional evaluation in patients with schizophrenia. Before and after randomly assigned treatment with active and sham rTMS, patients performed the Wall of Faces task during fMRI scanning. fMRI analysis showed that rTMS treatment resulted in reduced activation of striato-fronto-parietal brain areas, while activation increased compared to baseline after sham. Thus, prefrontal rTMS may normalize an increased brain response to ambiguous emotional stimuli, but future studies should confirm these findings.