Trial design
The study was conducted at the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China, from March 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021. The study was a double-blind randomized controlled trial. The participants were allocated to one of two groups, A and B. In group A, the V1 areas that were functionally associated with the DLPFC were targeted, while participants in group B were treated by targeting the V1 area functionally linked with the ACC. In addition, both groups were then randomly divided into two subgroups, namely, A1/A2 and B1/B2, according to the stimulating pattern; the allocation was performed using a random number table generated by a computer by trained staff. All the participants were treated with rTMS once daily, five times per week for four weeks. Specifically, groups A1 and B1 received 10 days of active treatment followed by 10 days of sham treatment, referred to as DLPFC/ACC active-sham rTMS. In contrast, groups A2 and B2 received 10 days of sham treatment followed by 10 days of active treatment, referred to as DLPFC/ACC sham-active rTMS (see Fig. 