S195. ROLE OF BOOSTER SESSION TRANSCRANIAL DIRECT CURRENT STIMULATION (TDCS) FOR PERSISTENT AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Auditory verbal hallucinations (AH), one of the hallmark symptoms, are present in 60–80% of schizophrenia (SZ) patients. 25% of patients suffering from AH in schizophrenia fail to respond to any psychotropic medication. Non-invasive brain stimulation techniques like transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), with cathodal electrode placement on the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is known to alleviate such symptoms in SZ. In this study, we describe the effects of booster tDCS after relapse of AH in patients. The pattern and effectiveness of booster treatment cycles for alleviation of AH in a naturalistic clinical setting are explored in this study. Methods Patients with persistent AH (n=15) received an initial course (cycle) of add-on tDCS with cathode at left TPJ and anode over left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (L-DLPFC) with 2mA current, twice-daily 20-minute sessions for 5 days with intersession interval of 3-hours. Clinical global impression- improvement scale (CGI-I) was rated at the end of the course for every patient. All the patients who were found to show response (“much improved” and “very much improved”) received repeat cycles of add-on booster tDCS after a varying duration ranging from 1–32 months from initial treatment course, due to relapse/persistence of AH. Thirteen out of fifteen patients received one booster cycle while one patient received 3 booster cycles and another received 12 booster cycles. We conducted a spearman’s rank correlation test to determine the correlation between CGI-I score rating at the end of add-on tDCS, and the duration of maintenance of improvement before relapse/ worsening of AH. Results Six of the fifteen patients (40%) had responded “very much improved” and nine (60%) patients had responded “much improved” to tDCS in the initial cycle. It was found that 50% of the initial “very much improved” responders (n=3) had a comparable response to tDCS after booster sessions for relapse of symptoms while 50% of patients showed “much improved” (n=2) and “minimally improved” (n=1) response in the booster sessions. Among the nine patients who showed “much improved” response from the initial cycle, one patient showed better response than initial cycle (“very much improved”) to booster session. Five patients showed “minimally changed” response in the second cycle in the booster sessions while three patients had comparable responses. The average duration of symptom free interval/ maintenance of improvement with initial cycle of tDCS was found to be 10.46± 9.23 months. The CGI improvement from the initial add-on tDCS course and the duration of the maintenance of improvement/symptom-free interval before the booster session was not found to be significantly correlated (r=0.332, p=0.226) Discussion A reduction in hallucinations was noted with booster tDCS in patients who had responded to the initial course of add-on tDCS. Booster tDCS is a feasible option and given its cost-effectiveness and ease of administration, booster sessions of tDCS can be considered for resurgence of symptoms. Future studies are recommended in systematically exploring maintenance tDCS as an add-on treatment for persistent/recurring AVH in schizophrenia.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".