Non-invasive brain stimulation effectiveness in anxiety disorder treatment: a meta-analysis on sham/behavior-controlled studies

Abstract

Over the past decades, the possibility of using non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) to treat mental disorders received considerable attention. To date, no recommendation is available for anxiety disorders, suggesting that evidence is still limited. Here, we systematically revised the existing literature, and quantitively analyzed the effectiveness of transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation in anxiety disorders treatment.Following PRISMA guidelines, three electronic databases were screened to the end of February 2020 to select English-written peer-reviewed articles, including a clinical anxiety sample, a NIBS technique, and a control condition. Overall, ten papers met the inclusion criteria.TheHedge g for scores at the specific and generic anxiety questionnaires before and after the treatment was computed as effect size and analyzed in two independent random-effects meta-analyses. Moreover, considering the well-known comorbidity between anxiety and depression, a third meta-analysis was run, analyzing depression scores’ outcomes. Albeit preliminary, our findings highlighted that real stimulation significantly reduced anxiety and depression scores compared to the control condition, suggesting that NIBS can alleviate clinical symptoms.

Reduction of drive for thinness and body dissatisfaction in people with self-reported dysregulated eating behaviors after intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

“…Although our sample falls into the moderate anxiety range for both state anxiety and trait anxiety, we did not find any variations in the scores after iTBS. Indeed, the few studies that applied excitatory stimulation protocols in anxiety disorders found that when the DLPFC was targeted and multiple sessions were employed, clinical symptoms decreased, implying that evidence is needed to strengthen conclusions about the effectiveness of a single session of NIBS in anxiety disorders (Vergallito et al, 2021).…”