Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Mental Illnesses are the costliest of non-communicable diseases worldwide - estimated to result in $6 Trillion in annual societal burden by 2030. To address the inadequacy of current approaches to psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) will be used for identifying abnormalities in brain activity and as a form of treatment. By measuring the effects of single pulse TMS with concurrent EEG (i.e. TMS-EEG), we can gain insight about how information is processed in the brain. At the same time, the application of repetitive TMS (rTMS) pulses can lead to lasting changes in brain function, either increasing or decreasing the connection between brain regions, the effects of which can be tracked with TMS-EEG. This study will include TMS-EEG recordings from 300 patients with various psychiatric diagnoses at baseline, between sessions, and after a course of rTMS treatment. TMS-EEG recordings will also be obtained from matched healthy controls. The pattern of brain activity from healthy controls will be used as a reference for identifying abnormalities in individual psychiatric patients. The abnormalities will then be used for personalizing their rTMS treatments. Results from the proposed study will have the potential to transform clinical practice in the near term.