Just recently stumbled on some literature/studies using TMS to treat both positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Thought some of you might find the subject interesting and worth discussing, may even provide a ray of hope for those who are feeling a bit defeated by the disease. If you live in a big city there might be some hope that you can get on a clinical trial, particularly one that deals with the negative effects which they’ve had greater success with. TMS has been quite successful on alleviating depression (I believe you can even get appointments for this type of treatment now) and has had partial success of lessening auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, but the data is still very limited. It’s only been approved for clinical use in the US in 2008, so it’s still in it’s infancy. Anyways, it’s interesting to say the least. Here is a quick summary on TMS & it’s efficacy in treating schizophrenia. You could look up YouTube to find demonstrations of how it works. It’s basically sending repeated minor electronic signals through areas of your brain to fire up neural pathways. For example, if you use the TMS device from the left-to-right side of your brain it will activate involuntary muscle movements - from the left side of your body to the right side of your body - from the arms to the shoulders to the legs - all depending on where you line up the device in relation to your brain. Pretty neat stuff.
I can’t post a link but you can search “Efficacy of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in the Treatment of Schizophrenia: A Review of the Literature to Date” to get an overview of what I’m talking about. If anyone wants to link it that would be great, it says new users can’t share links so maybe someone can hook it up.
My psydoc was talking about this. I think he said there was some promising results. I don’t even know if it’s on trial over here or he’d read it in the literature…I will ask him next time I see him!
It’s showing promising results for the negative symptoms (like I mentioned above, you can now get treatment in certain places) but the data is more limited for the positive symptoms. If you can get involved in a trial don’t hesitate. It’s new technology, it’s non-invasive and they simply need more data on schizophrenia to determine it’s efficacy in treatment. Also treatment isn’t cheap, so that’s another reason to look for clinical trials in your area.
I just bought a TDCS machine which works as well as TMS. I literally put myself in harms way trying to find a TMS doctor and I finally did! He did TDCS/TMS free of charge for a year. I just now am getting around to doing TDCS on myself. My device was supposed to be shipped today but I was walking my dogs around the block when it came and I missed signing it. TDCS was the only thing to improve my hallucinations. TMS on the cerebellum made me a little bit crazy because the operator was a stupid ■■■■ who induced fear by playing it stupid.
I reccomend TDCS on the temporal paritel lobe and DLFPC.