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Effects of rTMS on Cognitive Functions and Behavior in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder

NCT06524310 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 35

Last updated 2025-10-21

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder with core symptoms that include impairments in social communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors, interests, and activities. Social cognition is a broad term used to understand, perceive, and interpret information about others and ourselves in a social context. Impairments in social cognition are often highlighted as a potential mechanism underlying social disability in autism spectrum disorder. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive technique that modulates brain activity through targeted electromagnetic pulses. It's one of the methods used to deliver electrical stimuli through the scalp in conscious humans. Recently, rTMS has not only been used for the treatment of major depressive disorders, but it has also been advanced as a potential therapeutic technique to treat neurologic disorders such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis, and many other neuropsychiatric disorders. High-order cognitive functions, such as Executive function (EF) and social cognition, rely on neural network oscillations in the gamma frequency (30-80 Hz) band. It has been proposed that GABA-inhibitory interneurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) contribute to the synchronization of pyramidal neurons, which is necessary for EF performance. Additionally, given the theory of abnormal synaptic plasticity and excitation/inhibition ratio in ASD, as well as the ability of TMS to modify cortical excitability and plasticity, it leads to exploring the therapeutic potential of rTMS in ASD. This study examines the effectiveness of low-frequency rTMS in improving social, cognitive, and sensory function in individuals with ASD. Further understanding of the effect of low-frequency rTMS in altering the cognitive function in ASD individuals with ASD may help to achieve some answers related to the mechanism behind ASD.

Conditions

Interventions

DEVICE

Stimulation with low frequency rTMS at 1 Hz

Stimulation with low-frequency rTMS at 1 Hz with 90% MT will be applied with a total of 180 pulses each time, which contains 18 trains with ten pulses and an interval of 20 s between any two adjacent trains. The TMS treatment course will be administered twice per week for 9 weeks; the first six treatments will be over the left DLPFC, the second six sessions will be over the right DLPFC, and the remaining six sessions will be placed on the bilateral DLPFC stimulation.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • King Saud University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • HAYFA A ALGHABBAN, MD,MSc · Department of physiology, collage of Medicine, King Saud University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
DOUBLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
5 Years
Max Age
11 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2024-07-20
Primary Completion
2025-04-30
Completion
2025-09-30
FDA Device
Yes

Countries

  • Saudi Arabia

Study Locations

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Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT06524310 on ClinicalTrials.gov