Shahla Modir
Using the TMS machine to strengthen a part of the brain that’s weak works really well with all the other treatment modalities that we have in terms of people doing psychodrama and learning cognitive behavioral therapy for their substance use disorder, doing individual therapy to learn tools and coping, starting an AA program or peer-based support for their sobriety, to also have a TMS machine where they can basically retrain the brakes of the brain is a very unique setting.
There you can learn all the cognitive tools and have a neuromodulation tool that’s literally working your brain out every day. The part of your brain that is really weak, that prefrontal cortex, that’s the brakes of the brain. The brakes of the brain are where you say, “No,” or, “Let me stop and think this through.” When you use different substances of abuse, the brakes stop working. The substances themselves make it such that decision-making and impulse control, executive function are diminished. So people start to make really bad decisions when they’re using a lot of drugs and alcohol, and part of it is that there are brain changes that happen as a consequence of that.