Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism
Open Access

Review Article

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Alzheimers Disease and Cortical Dementias

Benussi A, Padovani A and Borroni B^*

Centre for Ageing Brain and Neurodegenerative Disorders, Neurology Unit, Department of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Barbara Borroni
MD, Clinica Neurologica, Università degliStudi di Brescia
P.le Spedali Civili 1, 25123, Brescia, Italy
Tel: 0039 0303995632
E-mail: bborroni@inwind.it

Received date: September 07, 2015; Accepted date: October 16, 2015; Published date: October 23, 2015

Citation: Benussi A, Padovani A, Borroni B (2015) Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Alzheimer’s Disease and Cortical Dementias. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 5:197. doi: 10.4172/2161-0460.1000197

Copyright: © 2015 Benussi A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has become a safe, noninvasive, and promising tool to assess specific cortical circuits in the central nervous system. Since its introduction, the use of TMS in clinical neurophysiology, neurology, neuroscience, and psychiatry has spread widely, leading to important findings on cortical function in physiological and pathological conditions. Indeed, numerous studies have described abnormalities in specific cortical circuits using particular TMS stimulation paradigms, which allow the indirect assessment of inhibitory and excitatory interneuronal activity, mainly dependent on GABA receptors, of central cholinergic activity, and of cortical plasticity. The objective of the present work is to examine the utility of TMS as a means to support and predict the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer ’s disease and other cortical dementias, in a setting where our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases is far from adequate.

Keywords