Asian J Psychiatr. 2015 Jun 2;
Authors: Shivakumar V, Chhabra H, Subbanna M, Agarwal SM, Bose A, Kalmady SV, Narayanaswamy JC, Debnath M, Venkatasubramanian G
Dysregulated cortical plasticity has been demonstrated to underlie the pathogenesis of positive symptoms like auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia (Stephan et al., 2009).
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, can modulate neuroplasticity (Nitsche et al., 2008).
Add-on tDCS has been shown to ameliorate auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia that are non-responsive to antipsychotic treatment (Bose et al., 2014; Brunelin et al., 2012).
Preliminary evidence suggests neuroplasticity modulation effect of tDCS to improve treatment-resistant auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia (Nawani et al., 2014).
In healthy subjects, Val158Met polymorphism of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) – a neuroplasticity related gene (Witte et al., 2012) has been shown to modulate behavioral effect of tDCS (Plewnia et al., 2013).
In this study, we examined the influence of COMT gene polymorphism on effect of tDCS on auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia.
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Met carriers in our study demonstrating significantly lesser percentage reduction of auditory hallucinations is in tune with these previous observations (Plewnia et al., 2013).
Dopaminergic basis has been postulated to underlie the plasticity modulation effects of tDCS (Fresnoza et al., 2014).
Thus, the observed finding might be linked to the differential effects of COMT Val158Met polymorphism on cortical dopamine levels.
PMID: 26070413 [PubMed – as supplied by publisher]