Table 4 Therapeutic methods evaluated to treat functional tremor

repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)

Repeated low-frequency (0.25 Hz) magnetic simulation over the motor cortex or the spinal roots on the symptomatic side showed symptom improvement in functional tremor patients

([9, 13, 14, 31])

tremor entrainment

Tremor entrainment in form of tactile and auditory external cueing combined with real-time visual feedback as a short-term treatment can be effective in functional tremor therapy

[11]

Pharmacological treatment

drugs (e.g. propanolol, primidone, gabapentin, clonazepam, botulinum toxin, trihexyphenidyl) known from organic tremor treatment can be used with more or less success in FT therapy

([25, 33])

psychodynamic psychotherapy (PDP)

PDP can lead to an improvement in patients suffering from functional tremor. The prediction of responding rates is very challenging and prospective studies are generally lacking.

([18, 29])

cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)

CBT is an approach to instruct patients in identifying cognitive as well as physiologic responses experienced with stress. It aims to interrupt automatisms learned in association with the functional movement disorder. Even if the amount of data are small, single blind studies proved it as an effective therapeutic option

([12, 18, 23])