Transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography in advancing the diagnosis and treatment of depression

Abstract

It is estimated that one in every five North American youth are affected by a mental illness or disorder. Surpassed only by injuries, mental disorders in youth are ranked as the second highest hospital care expenditure in Canada. Unfortunately, current treatment and diagnostic strategies in youth are too often borrowed from adult population and not tailored for the youth brain. As a result, current treatments are not as effective or cause side effects in youth. Furthermore, in adult population, treatment prescription is too often a trial-and-error process leading to years of untreated conditions (e.g., depression) before an effective therapy is identified. Non-invasive brain stimulation technology such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and its combination with neural recording through electroencephalography (EEG) provide promising opportunities in designing and identifying novel and targeted diagnostic and treatment solutions for brain disorders. In this talk, I review our work over the past decade in development and application of TMS/EEG in human brain mapping towards identification of novel diagnostic and treatment strategies in mental health disorders, with a recent focus in depression.