Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders in elderly people: Electric field assessment

There is an increasing interest in the advancement of TMS coils for the treatment of various neuropsychiatric disorders, which affect in particular elderly people. To that purpose, lately, specific coils, such as the family of the Hesed (H) coils, able to improve the penetration depth of the stimulation, was developed. In order to establish their real stimulation effectiveness, possibly limited by the prefrontal atrophy that characterize the elderly brain, this study provides a full characterization of the electric field distribution induced inside cerebral tissues. That was performed by making use of computational electromagnetics techniques applied to two human models of different ages including an 84 years-old man model.