Cognitive Effects Following Offline High-Frequency Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (HF-rTMS) in Healthy Populations: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

This study was registered on the PROSPERO international prospective protocol for systematic reviews (PROSPERO 2020 CRD 42,020,191,269). The Risk of Bias 2 tool was used to ass ess the risk of bias in randomised trials. Separate analyses examined the cognitive effects of excitatory and inhibitory forms of offline HF-rTMS on accuracy and reaction times across six cognitive domains. Fifty-three studies (N = 1507) met inclusion criteria. Excitatory offline HF-rTMS showed significant small sized effects for improving accuracy (k = 46, g = 0.12) and reaction time (k = 44, g = -0.13) across all cognitive domains collapsed. Excitatory offline HF-rTMS demonstrated a relatively greater effect for executive functioning in accuracy (k = 24, g = 0.14) . Reaction times were also improved for the executive function (k = 21, g = -0.11) and motor (k = 3, g = -0.22) domains following excitatory offline HF-rTMS. The current review was restricted to healthy individuals and future research is required to examine cognitive enhancement from offline HF-rTMS in clinical cohorts.
Source: Neuropsychology Review - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research