Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY
Volume 11, Issue 2, Pages 249-254Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/S1461145707007833
Keywords
brain stimulation; electrical stimulation; major depression; prefrontal cortex; transcranial direct current stimulation
Funding
- FAPESP
- NIH [DK071851-01, K24 RR018875]
- Harvard University
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Preliminary findings suggest that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can have antidepressant effects. We sought to test this further in a parallel-group, double-blind clinical trial with 40 patients with major depression, medication-free randomized into three groups of treatment: anodal tDCS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (active group-'DLPFC'); anodal tDCS of the occipital cortex (active control group-'occipital') and sham tDCS (placebo control group-'sham'). tDCS was applied for 10 sessions during a 2-wk period. Mood was evaluated by a blinded rater using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The treatment was well tolerated with minimal side-effects that were distributed equally across all treatment groups. We found significantly larger reductions in depression scores after DLPFC tDCS [HDRS reduction of 40.4 % (+/-25.8%)] compared to occipital [HDRS reduction of 21.3 % ( +/-12.9%)] and sham tDCS [HDRS reduction of 10.4 % (+/-36.6%)]. The beneficial effects of tDCS in the DLPFC group persisted for 1 month after the end of treatment. Our findings support further investigation on the effects of this novel potential therapeutic approach - tDCS - for the treatment of major depression.
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