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Objective: To investigate the prevalence of occipital bending (an occipital lobe crossing or twisting across the midline) in subjects with schizophrenia and matched healthy controls. Method: Occipital bending prevalence was investigated in 37 patients with schizophrenia and 44 healthy controls. Results: Ratings showed that prevalence was nearly three times higher among schizophrenia patients (13/37 [35.1%]) than in control subjects (6/44 [13.6%]). Furthermore, those with schizophrenia had greater normalized gray matter volume but less white matter volume and had larger brain-to-cranial ratio. Conclusion: The results suggest that occipital bending is more prevalent among schizophrenia patients than healthy subjects and that schizophrenia patients have different gray matter-white matter proportions. Although the cause and clinical ramifications of occipital bending are unclear, the results infer that occipital bending may be a marker of psychiatric illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To determine if an accelerated rTMS protocol results in distinct depressive symptom response trajectories, compared to a standard rTMS protocol. We also sought to validate previous analyses that identified distinct depressive symptom response trajectories with rTMS treatment using an external dataset., Method: Data from two recent clinical trials comparing accelerated rTMS protocol delivered to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) with standard once-daily rTMS protocol were used to identify depressive symptom response trajectories. The accelerated protocol in Trial 1 was conventional 10-Hz rTMS, while Trial 2 employed intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS). Participants were adult outpatients (18-70 years old) with bipolar or unipolar depression and moderate-severe depression (Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale score >19) who had failed to respond to adequate courses of two different antidepressants. We used group-based trajectory modeling to identify MADRS response trajectories, and regression techniques adjusting for baseline depressive symptom severity to determine the association between treatment protocol and depressive symptom response trajectory., Results: Treatment outcomes of 189 participants were analysed. We identified four distinct response trajectories: "nonresponse" (N = 59; 30.7%), "minimal response" (N = 65; 34.1%), "higher symptoms, response" (N = 26; 14.6%), "lower symptoms, response" (N = 39; 20.6%). We failed to find an association between rTMS protocol (accelerated vs standard) with depressive symptom response trajectory even after adjusting for baseline depressive symptom severity., Conclusion: The accelerated rTMS protocol in this study did not impact depressive symptom response trajectories. This work provides further confirmatory evidence that there are distinct depressive symptom response trajectories with rTMS delivered to the left DLPFC., Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12616000443493 and ACTRN12613000044729., (Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Randomized controlled trials support the antidepressant efficacy of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS); however, there is individual variability in the magnitude of response. Examination of response predictors has been hampered by methodological limitations such as small sample sizes and single-site study designs. Data from a multisite sham-controlled trial of the antidepressant efficacy of TMS provided an opportunity to examine predictors of acute outcome. An open-label extension for patients who failed to improve provided the opportunity for confirmatory analysis. Treatment was administered to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex at 10 pulses per second, 120% of motor threshold, for a total of 3000 pulses per day. Change on the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale after 4 weeks was the primary efficacy outcome. A total of 301 patients with nonpsychotic unipolar major depression at 23 centers were randomized to active or sham TMS. Univariate predictor analyses showed that the degree of prior treatment resistance in the current episode was a predictor of positive treatment outcome in both the controlled study and the open-label extension trial. In the randomized trial, shorter duration of current episode was also associated with a better outcome. In the open-label extension study, absence of anxiety disorder comorbidity was associated with an improved outcome, but duration of current episode was not. The number of prior treatment failures was the strongest predictor for positive response to acute treatment with TMS. Shorter duration of current illness and lack of anxiety comorbidity may also confer an increased likelihood of good antidepressant response to TMS.