NCT07010614

Brain Stimulation to the Hippocampus in Schizophrenia

Theta Burst Modulation of Hippocampal-Cortical Rhythms in Schizophrenia

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 60 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Stanford University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Schizophrenia - marked by delusions, hallucinations, and cognitive deficits - causes the most disability of any mental health condition, but existing treatments have significant side effect burden and are often ineffective. Disordered neural activity in the hippocampus likely contributes to schizophrenia symptoms, but to develop better therapies we need to understand whether hippocampal activity in schizophrenia can be systematically affected by non-invasive brain stimulation techniques like transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This proposal will investigate the use of connectivity-guided theta burst brain stimulation to specifically target hippocampal function in schizophrenia, offering insights into fundamental hippocampal processes, schizophrenia pathophysiology, and potential avenues to use brain stimulation as a therapeutic tool in this devastating illness.

Conditions

• Schizophrenia Disorders
• Mental Disorder
• Psychotic Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	Intracranial electrodes	Intracranial electrodes will be used for the delivery of invasive electrical brain stimulation.
DEVICE	TMS	TMS will be used for the delivery of noninvasive brain stimulation
DEVICE	TMS sham	Sham TMS will be used as a comparator for noninvasive brain stimulation

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-10-01
• Primary completion: 2027-09-30
• Completion: 2027-09-30
• First posted: 2025-06-08
• Last updated: 2026-02-27

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States

Regulatory

• FDA-regulated device study