Objectives: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and debilitating anxiety disorders. However, few studies had been dedicated to the neurobiology underlying SAD until the last decade. Rates of non-responders to standard methods of treatment remain unsatisfactorily high of approximately 25%, including SAD. Advances in our understanding of SAD could lead to new treatment strategies. A potential non invasive therapeutic option is repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Thus, we reported two cases of SAD treated with rTMS Methods: The bibliographical search used Pubmed/Medline, ISI Web of Knowledge and Scielo databases. The terms chosen for the search were: anxiety disorders, neuroimaging, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. Results: In most of the studies conducted on anxiety disorders, except SAD, the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), more specifically dorsolateral PFC was stimulated, with marked results when applying high-rTMS compared with studies stimulating the opposite side. However, according to the “valence hypothesis”, anxiety disorders might be characterized by an interhemispheric imbalance associated with increased right-hemispheric activity. With regard to the two cases treated with rTMS, we found a decrease in BDI, BAI and LSAS scores from baseline to follow-up. Conclusion: We hypothesize that the application of low-rTMS over the right medial PFC (mPFC; the main structure involved in SAD circuitry) combined with high-rTMS over the left mPFC, for at least 4 weeks on consecutive weekdays, may induce a balance in brain activity, opening an attractive therapeutic option for the treatment of SAD.

Neurological and psychiatric disorders are characterized by several disabling symptoms for which effective, mechanism-based treatments remain elusive. Consequently, more advanced non-invasive therapeutic methods are required. A method that may modulate brain activity and be viable for use in clinical practice is repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). It is a non-invasive procedure whereby a pulsed magnetic field stimulates electrical activity in the brain. Here, we focus on the basic foundation of rTMS, the main stimulation parametters, the factors that influence individual responses to rTMS and the experimental advances of rTMS that may become a viable clinical application to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders. The findings showed that rTMS can improve some symptoms associated with these conditions and might be useful for promoting cortical plasticity in patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders. However, these changes are transient and it is premature to propose these applications as realistic therapeutic options, even though the rTMS technique has been evidenced as a potential modulator of sensorimotor integration and neuroplasticity. Functional imaging of the region of interest could highlight the capacity of rTMS to bring about plastic changes of the cortical circuitry and hint at future novel clinical interventions. Thus, we recommend that further studies clearly determine the role of rTMS in the treatment of these conditions. Finally, we must remember that however exciting the neurobiological mechanisms might be, the clinical usefulness of rTMS will be determined by its ability to provide patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders with safe, long-lasting and substantial improvements in quality of life.

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Ecological-enactive approaches to cognition aim to explain cognition in terms of the dynamic coupling between agent and environment. Accordingly, cognition of one's immediate environment (which is sometimes labeled "basic" cognition) depends on enaction and the picking up of affordances. However, ecological-enactive views supposedly fail to account for what is sometimes called "higher" cognition, i.e., cognition about potentially absent targets, which therefore can only be explained by postulating representational content. This challenge levelled against ecological-enactive approaches highlights a putative explanatory gap between basic and higher cognition. In this paper, we examine scientific cognition-a paradigmatic case of higher cognition-and argue that it shares fundamental features with basic cognition, for enaction and affordance selection are central to the scientific enterprise. Our argument focuses on modeling, and on how models promote scientific understanding. We base our argument on a non-representational account of scientific understanding and on the material engagement theory, for models are hereby conceived as material objects designed for scientific engagements. Having done so, we conclude that the explanatory gap is significantly less threatening to the ecological-enactive approach than it might appear.

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