In this episode of The Biological Psychiatry Podcast, Dr. Elvisha Dhamala sits down with Dr. Katharine Dunlop from the University of Toronto and St. Michael's Hospital to discuss her recent paper published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
Depression in older adults doesn't just affect mood; it also often comes with significant cognitive difficulties that may not improve even when mood does. While repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS, is emerging as a promising treatment for late-life depression that hasn't responded to medication, we lack reliable ways to predict who is most likely to benefit, particularly when it comes to cognitive outcomes. In this conversation, we explore how Dr. Dunlop and her team used brain charts to examine whether brain age can predict cognitive improvement following rTMS in older adults with depression. Dr. Dunlop explains the important distinction between antidepressant response and cognitive response to rTMS, walks us through the cognitive subtypes identified in the sample, and discusses the finding that brain age predicted improvement in verbal learning but not depression severity. We discuss what it means that this effect was independent of any single tissue type, depression severity, comorbidities, and medication use, and why that matters for understanding what brain age is actually capturing. The conversation closes with a look at what these findings mean for clinicians treating older adults with depression and how brain aging measures might eventually help personalize treatment decisions.
Paper:
Brain age is associated with cognitive improvement following repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in late-life depression
DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2026.05.016
Follow Biological Psychiatry:
Biological Psychiatry
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science
Instagram: @biologicalpsych
LinkedIn: Biological Psychiatry
Bluesky: Biological Psychiatry
This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or professional advice. The views expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect those of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, its family of journals, or its editors. © 2026 Society of Biological Psychiatry. All rights reserved, including those for text and data mining or use in AI systems.
