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Abstract
Introduction Schizophrenia is a psychiatric illness associated with brain function alterations and varying degree of treatment resistance, often leading to severe social malfunctioning. In recent decades, numerous studies have been investigating the therapeutic potential of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) as a non-invasive therapy for schizophrenia. However, its clinical efficacy remains controversial, as a number of clinical trials indicated moderate therapeutic effect while others failed to reproduce the positive result. Moreover, the neurobiological mechanism of action remains unclear, possibly constricting the application of TMS in clinical practice. The present protocol of meta-analysis aims to investigate the TMS-related functional neuroimaging (ie, functional MRI) features and alterations in subjects with schizophrenia, and to discuss the potential of functional MRI in TMS researches.
Methods and analysis The study selection process will follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Meta-Analyses guideline and quality assessment will be conducted with a customised checklist. We plan to search in the following databases: PubMed, Embase, OVID, China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Wanfang Data, from their respective dates of inception to 1 May 2020, with language restricted to English and Chinese. Studies focusing on the brain functional alterations in patients with schizophrenia treated by TMS will be retrieved.
Ethics and dissemination This work does not require ethics approval as it will be based on published studies. This systematic review will be publicly disseminated in peer-reviewed journals.
PROSPERO registration number CRD42020166288.
- neuroradiology
- schizophrenia & psychotic disorders
- magnetic resonance imaging
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Footnotes
SZ and YH contributed equally.
Contributors BZ was responsible for this study. SZ, YH and BZ conceived and designed the study. BZ, SZ, YF and LC participated in drafting the protocol and preparing the manuscript. SZ, YH, YF, LC and BZ read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding This work is partly funded by National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFC1306804).
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.