Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of the Primary Motor Cortex Beyond Motor Rehabilitation: A Review of the Current Evidence

Overview

Journal Brain Sci

Publisher MDPI

Date 2022 Jun 24

PMID 35741646

Authors

Abdulhameed Tomeh

Abdul Hanif Khan Yusof Khan

Liyana Najwa Inche Mat

Hamidon Basri

Wan Aliaa Wan Sulaiman

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has emerged as a novel technique to stimulate the human brain through the scalp. Over the years, identifying the optimal brain region and stimulation parameters has been a subject of debate in the literature on therapeutic uses of repetitive TMS (rTMS). Nevertheless, the primary motor cortex (M1) has been a conventional target for rTMS to treat motor symptoms, such as hemiplegia and spasticity, as it controls the voluntary movement of the body. However, with an expanding knowledge base of the M1 cortical and subcortical connections, M1-rTMS has shown a therapeutic efficacy that goes beyond the conventional motor rehabilitation to involve pain, headache, fatigue, dysphagia, speech and voice impairments, sleep disorders, cognitive dysfunction, disorders of consciousness, anxiety, depression, and bladder dysfunction. In this review, we summarize the latest evidence on using M1-rTMS to treat non-motor symptoms of diverse etiologies and discuss the potential mechanistic rationale behind the management of each of these symptoms.

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