Magnetic seizure therapy and electroconvulsive therapy increase aperiodic activity

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide. One of the most efficacious treatments for treatment-resistant MDD is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Recently, magnetic seizure therapy (MST) was developed as an alternative to ECT due to its more favorable side effect profile. While these approaches have been very successful clinically, the neural mechanisms underlying their therapeutic effects are unknown. For example, clinical “slowing” of the electroencephalogram beginning in the postictal state and extending days to weeks post-treatment has been observed in both treatment modalities. However, a recent longitudinal study of a small cohort of ECT patients revealed that, rather than delta oscillations, clinical slowing was better explained by increases in aperiodic activity, an emerging EEG signal linked to neural inhibition. Here we investigate the role of aperiodic activity in a cohort of patients who received ECT and a cohort of patients who received MST treatment. We find that aperiodic neural activity increases significantly in patients receiving either ECT or MST. Although not directly related to clinical efficacy in this dataset, increased aperiodic activity is linked to greater amounts of neural inhibition, which is suggestive of a potential shared neural mechanism of action across ECT and MST.