Adam Philip Stern

Harvard Medical School | HMS · Department of Psychiatry

Background Many patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) respond to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment. This study aimed to investigate whether modulation of corticomotor excitability by rTMS predicts response to rTMS treatment for TRD in 10Hz and intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) protocols. Methods T...

Background When repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is used to treat medication refractory depression, the treatment pulse intensity is individualized according to motor threshold (MT). This measure is often acquired only on the first day of treatment, as per the protocol currently approved by Food and Drug Administration. Objectiv...

Background Seizures are rare during repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment, but estimating risk is difficult because of study heterogeneity and sampling limitations. Moreover, there are few studies comparing rates between device manufacturers. Objective The objective of this study was to calculate rTMS seizure rates across v...

Purpose: Patients with cancer commonly report distress and fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) impacting quality of life and clinical outcomes. This study aims to test the association between emotional well-being and clinical characteristics of survivors with localized renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Materials and methods: Survivors with localized RCC w...

654 Background: Effective management of treatment related toxicities is crucial to maximizing patient outcomes and enhancing quality of life in renal cell carcinoma. Little is known about patient perception and reporting of side effects in a real world setting outside clinical trials. We sought to gather independent data from online patient communi...

649 Background: Fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) is considered one of the most pervasive and burdensome sources of distress for patients. Whereas it can be considered an adaptive response to real threats associated with diagnosis, treatment and disease, numerous studies have suggested that elevated levels can be dysfunctional. Despite this extensive...

Objectives/hypothesis: In this study, we tested the use of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to reduce depression and anxiety in patients using or not using benzodiazepines. We hypothesized that rTMS would concurrently reduce symptoms in both depression and anxiety and that these reductions would correlate with patients using ben...

I think back to the thousands of times that I reassured my psychiatric inpatients that their lives would get better. I spoke of amazing research being done to better understand the brain and design drugs that target new pharmacologic pathways. Effectively, I implored the patients to just trust me, and sometimes, particularly if it was 2 am and all...

I’ve learned that the carving doesn’t happen all at once. It takes place over months and years if you live with the type of cancer that allows for this kind of negotiation. When I was first diagnosed with stage III kidney cancer earlier this year at the age of 33, I didn’t know it; I focused entirely on the chance that the doctors would cut the can...

For the author, practicing psychiatry has always been about empathy. But when he is diagnosed with stage 3 kidney cancer, he finds himself seeing his patients’ real and devastating problems as somehow less major than before.

Functional connectivity with the subgenual cingulate identifies a target in the frontal cortex for transcranial magnetic stimulation. In this issue, Weigand et al. show that proximity of a patient’s stimulation site to this target predicts antidepressant response.

Noninvasive brain stimulation refers to a set of technologies and techniques with which to modulate the excitability of the brain via transcranial stimulation. Two major modalities of noninvasive brain stimulation are transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial current stimulation. Six TMS devices now have approved uses by the U.S. Foo...

Four transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) devices are currently approved for use in treatment-resistant depression. The authors present the first data-driven study examining the patient- and technician-experience using three of these distinct devices. A retrospective survey design with both patient and technician arms was utilized. The study pop...

Background The optimal target in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for treating depression with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) remains unknown. Better efficacy has been associated with stimulation sites that are 1) more anterior and lateral and 2) more functionally connected to the subgenual cingulate. Here we prospect...

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is most widely known clinically as a treatment for medication-refractory major depressive disorder, but it holds promise in a number of other areas. In addition to emerging neurologic areas of investigation such as in mild cognitive impairment, dementia, Parkinson's disease and stroke rehab, novel approaches...

This study provides support for the hypothesis that treatment response to an initial course of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for depression predicts the magnitude of response to a subsequent course of rTMS in the setting of symptom relapse.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a treatment option for patients with treatment-resistant depression. By noninvasively targeting excitability in specific functional neuronal circuits, rTMS treatment represents an increasingly accessible approach toward affecting brain functioning with limited adverse effects. By making use of...

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is relatively common and appears to be associated with marked impairment in psychosocial functioning. Previous reports, however, did not investigate occupational functioning in detail, assess impairment specifically in occupational functioning using standardized measures in a nontreatment seeking sample, or examine co...