SynthesisPsychological medicine2021
Transcranial magnetic stimulation neurophysiology of patients with major depressive disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Psychological medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cortical excitability and therapeutic efficacy.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Neurophysiological profiles of patients with bipolar disorders as probed with transcranial magnetic stimulation: A systematic review.Neuropsychopharmacology reports · 2024Pooled it
- Efficacy and safety of non-invasive brain stimulation in combination with antidepressants in adolescents with depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Motor cortical inhibitory deficits in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder-A systematic review and meta-analysis of transcranial magnetic stimulation literature.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Feasibility and safety of transcranial direct current stimulation in the treatment of adolescent depression in a naturalistic inpatient setting: a double-blind randomized controlled trial.Scientific reports · 2026Trial
- Relationship between Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) total scores in older adults with major depressive disorder: An analysis of the OPTIMUM clinical trial.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Trial
- Role of neural oscillations in depression: highlights on gamma oscillations.Translational psychiatry · 2026Review
- Bridging the Poles: What the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Evidence Tells Us About Bipolar Depression.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Novel TMS-derived metrics enable machine learning classification of major depressive disorder.NPP - digital psychiatry and neuroscience · 2026Article
- Validation of an electroencephalography data assimilation-based computational approach for estimating cortical excitation-inhibition balance.Communications engineering · 2025Article
- Multi-scale modelling of location- and frequency-dependent synaptic plasticity induced by repetitive magnetic stimulation in the dendrites of pyramidal neurons.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Utilizing resting motor threshold to predict cognitive function in drug-naive patients with major depressive disorder.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- EEG Biomarkers for a Precision-Medicine Approach to Noninvasive Brain Stimulation for Major Depressive Disorder.Research square · 2025Article
- Embracing Internal States: A Review of Optimization of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Treating Depression.Neuroscience bulletin · 2025Review
- GABAMedComm · 2025Review
- Defective Intracortical Inhibition as a Marker of Impaired Neural Compensation in Amputees Undergoing Rehabilitation.Biomedicines · 2025Article
- Decreased prefrontal glutamatergic function is associated with a reduced astrocyte-related gene expression in treatment-resistant depression.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Are There Biological Correlates of Response to Yoga-Based Interventions in Depression? A Critical Scoping Review.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Across the Lifespan: Impact of Developmental and Degenerative Processes.Biological psychiatry · 2024Review
- Preliminary findings of a randomized controlled trial investigating the efficacy of transcranial magnetic stimulation in treatment-resistant depression: aFrontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a mental illness with high socio-economic burden, but its pathophysiology has not been fully elucidated. Recently, the cortical excitatory and inhibitory imbalance hypothesis and neuroplasticity hypothesis have been proposed for MDD. Although several studies have examined the neurophysiological profiles in MDD using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a meta-analysis of TMS neurophysiology has not been performed. The objective of this study was to compare TMS-electromyogram (TMS-EMG) findings between patients with MDD and healthy controls (HCs). To this end, we examined whether patients with MDD have lower short-interval cortical inhibition (SICI) which reflects gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)A receptor-mediated activity, lower cortical silent period (CSP) which represents GABAB receptor-mediated activity, higher intracortical facilitation (ICF) which reflects glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor-mediated activity, and the lower result of paired associative stimulation (PAS) paradigm which shows the level of neuroplasticity in comparison with HC. Further, we explored the effect of clinical and demographic factors that may influence TMS neurophysiological indices. We first searched and identified research articles that conducted single- or paired-pulse TMS-EMG on patients with MDD and HC. Subsequently, we extracted the data from the included studies and meta-analyzed the data with the comprehensive meta-analysis software. Patients with MDD were associated with lower SICI, lower CSP, potentially higher ICF, and lower PAS compared with HC. Our results confirmed the proposed hypotheses, suggesting the usefulness of TMS neurophysiology as potential diagnostic markers of MDD.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.