Treating psychiatric and motor disorders without surgery or life-long pharmacology is a challenging but attainable goal. One avenue of progress has been the development of non-invasive brain stimulation methods such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS).
Associate professor Marc Sommer, along with co-primary investigators Roberto Cabeza, professor of psychology and neuroscience; Greg Appelbaum and Angel Peterchev, associate professors of psychiatry and behavior science; and Simon Davis, assistant professor of neurology, have been awarded a four-year, $3 million grant from the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health. Funding for their project, “Impact of timing, targeting and brain state on rTMS of human and non-human primates,” begins September 1.
This project investigates the effects of rTMS on neural circuits as a function of spatiotemporal parameters and brain state in order to better understand why the method works and how to improve its efficacy.