3 ms·
Again going into non-expert territory, but AFAIK TMS is supposed to be slightly more effective than placebo. It doesn't work that much more often than placebo,
by Delk 6y ago
Again going into non-expert territory, but AFAIK TMS is supposed to be slightly more effective than placebo. It doesn't work that much more often than placebo, but more often anyway, and even in some cases that haven't been helped by medication or other treatments, which AFAIK tend to be the cases that often aren't affected by placebo either. I don't know exactly how you'd do a placebo alternative of TMS, though.
I don't know how it compares to ECT, though, and whether the cases potentially helped by each modality are the same or different. After all, depression is not a single coherent phenomenon. Individual cases can vary a lot, and it's quite possible that not all of depression is even the same disease with the same physical manifestations.
I don't know exactly why TMS would work either. I'm under the impression that it somehow increases activity in parts of the brain at which it's targeted (or inhibits it in others, if done with different parameters).
- perl4ever 6y agoDepression is a single coherent phenomenon, as much as cancer or diabetes or the common cold. Just because there are likely many causes doesn't mean there can never be an objective definition of it in biological terms. You can get a bruise from a million different things; that doesn't mean you can't measure it objectively as well as subjectively. There is an intermediate point on the causal chain that is useful to identify. Even just being able to determine mental state at a high resolution (temporally) would be incredible because then you can study treatments much better. Existing treatments tend to be like "ok take this for a month, now do you feel better" and people rationalize it by saying "well, maybe it's growing brain cells". Cause and effect just dissolve into murkiness when you can't do experiments with rapid turnaround.