Lack of effects of eight-week left dorsolateral prefrontal theta burst stimulation on white matter macro/microstructure and connection in autism

Chun-Hung Yeh, Po-Chun Lin, Rung-Yu Tseng, Yi-Ping Chao, Chen-Te Wu, Tai-Li Chou, Rou-Shayn Chen, Susan Shur-Fen Gau, Hsing Chang Ni, Hsiang-Yuan Lin

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Article peer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Whether brain stimulation could modulate brain structure in autism remains unknown. This study explored the impact of continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on white matter macro/microstructure in intellectually able children and emerging adults with autism. Sixty autistic participants were randomized (30 active) and received active or sham cTBS for eight weeks twice per week, 16 total sessions using a double-blind (participant-, rater-, analyst-blinded) design. All participants received high-angular resolution diffusion MR imaging at baseline and week 8. Twenty-eight participants in the active group and twenty-seven in the sham group with good imaging quality entered the final analysis. With longitudinal fixel-based analysis and network-based statistics, we found no significant difference between the active and sham groups in changes of white matter macro/microstructure and connections following cTBS. In addition, we found no association between baseline white matter macro/microstructure and autistic symptom changes from baseline to week 8 in the active group. In conclusion, we did not find a significant impact of left DLPFC cTBS on white matter macro/microstructure and connections in children and emerging adults with autism. These findings need to be interpreted in the context that the current intellectually able cohort in a single university hospital site limits the generalizability. Future studies are required to investigate if higher stimulation intensities and/or doses, other personal factors, or rTMS parameters might confer significant brain structural changes visible on MRI in ASD.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)794-807
Number of pages14
JournalBrain Imaging and Behavior
Volume18
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 08 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.

Keywords

  • Autism
  • Diffusion MRI
  • Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
  • Theta burst stimulation
  • White matter

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