Journal: Clinical EEG and Neuroscience (2025)
Authors: Aşık M, İlhan R, Günver MG, Orhan Ö, Esmeray MT, Kalaba Ö, Arıkan MK
Background:
Brain morphological biomarkers could contribute to understanding the treatment response in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Multimodal neuroimaging addresses this issue by providing more comprehensive information regarding neural processes and structures.
Objective:
The study aimed to investigate whether patients responsive to deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) differ from non-responsive individuals in terms of electrophysiology and brain morphology, and to test whether multimodal neuroimaging is superior to unimodal neuroimaging in predicting response to deep TMS.
Methods:
Thirty-two OCD patients underwent thirty sessions of deep TMS treatment. Based on a minimum 50% reduction in Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) scores after treatment, patients were grouped as responders (n = 25) and non-responders (n = 7). The baseline resting state qEEG and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) records of patients were recorded. Independent sample t-test is used to compare the groups. Then, three logistic regression models were calculated for only QEEG markers, only MRI markers, and both QEEG/MRI markers. The predictive values of the three models were compared.
Results:
OCD patients who responded to deep TMS treatment had increased Alpha-2 power in the left temporal area and increased volume in the left temporal pole, entorhinal area, and parahippocampal gyrus compared to non-responders. The logistic regression model showed better prediction performance when both QEEG and MRI markers were included.
Conclusions:
This study addresses the gap in the literature regarding new functional and structural neuroimaging markers and highlights the superiority of multimodal neuroimaging to unimodal neuroimaging techniques in predicting treatment response.
