Jessica M. Ross - Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Use musical rhythms and magnets to cure depression. News at 10:30AM (on Friday).

Wow!!!

Seriously.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive, outpatient procedure that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate nerve cells in the brain to treat mental health conditions like major depression and OCD. It is primarily used when medications or therapy have not provided adequate relief.

Why should magnets offer hope to people with depression? Why should magnetics do anything to the brain, given that the power used is a fraction of what is used for MRI?

Admittedly, TMS sounded like pseudo science when I first heard of it. But I’ve now seen enough to know that the effect is real. It does help people. I still don’t understand why, but I can’t write it off. What does the effectiveness of rythmic sounds in a magnetic field tell us about how the brain works. This is interesting.

I hope you will agree.

I’m very happy to announce that Dr. Jessica Ross will lead the last Hearing Seminar of the Spring Quarter. Her work has been to use rhythmic sounds (that’s the Hearing Seminar connection) to entrain the brain’s oscillators and maximize effectiveness. I don’t understand why, yet I believe the results. Seriously!!! I want to know more, especially why it might work. I hope you will agree.

Who: Jessica Marie Ross (Palo Alto VA and Stanford)
What: Sensory Entrained TMS: Using Musical Rhythm to Enhance Brain Stimulation
When: Friday June 5 at 10:30AM
Where: CCRMA Seminar Room, Top floor of the Knoll at Stanford
Why: Depression is a hard problem. Can sound and magnets help?

We all know that rhythm is good for the soul, but can it enhance magnetic treatments? Jessica will teach us why. Please come.

- Malcolm

Title:
Sensory Entrained TMS: Using Musical Rhythm to Enhance Brain Stimulation

Abstract:
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive technique that uses brief magnetic pulses to stimulate targeted brain regions. It is FDA-cleared for treating depression and other neuropsychiatric conditions, but remission rates remain low, in part because the brain's responsiveness to stimulation fluctuates moment to moment and standard protocols don't account for this. We developed sensory entrained TMS (seTMS), an approach that uses musical rhythms to predictably synchronize oscillatory brain activity and deliver stimulation precisely when targeted networks are most excitable. I will describe EEG evidence showing that listening to rhythmic music produces reliable phase dynamics in motor and prefrontal cortex, the primary targets of clinical TMS, and how we exploit this timing to enhance both the immediate effects and lasting plasticity of brain stimulation. seTMS requires only headphones and software compatible with any TMS device, making it practical for real clinical settings. I will discuss the various ongoing studies using seTMS and areas we are looking to explore in future work.

Bio:
Jessica Ross, PhD is a Research Health Science Specialist at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and an affiliate of the Stanford Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Using TMS, EEG, and multimodal behavioral paradigms, her research integrates sensorimotor neuroscience, auditory cognition, and clinical brain stimulation to investigate neural and physiological mechanisms underlying perception, movement, and cognition, with applications spanning psychiatric treatment, cognitive and motor rehabilitation, and aging. https://www.neuralrhythmslab.com/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36778457/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31901449/