Evaluation and Treatment of Vascular Cognitive Impairment by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.

Evaluation and Treatment of Vascular Cognitive Impairment by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Neural Plast. 2020;2020:8820881 Authors: Cantone M, Lanza G, Fisicaro F, Pennisi M, Bella R, Di Lazzaro V, Di Pino G Abstract The exact relationship between cognitive functioning, cortical excitability, and synaptic plasticity in dementia is not completely understood. Vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) is deemed to be the most common cognitive disorder in the elderly since it encompasses any degree of vascular-based cognitive decline. In different cognitive disorders, including VCI, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be exploited as a noninvasive tool able to evaluate in vivo the cortical excitability, the propension to undergo neural plastic phenomena, and the underlying transmission pathways. Overall, TMS in VCI revealed enhanced cortical excitability and synaptic plasticity that seem to correlate with the disease process and progression. In some patients, such plasticity may be considered as an adaptive response to disease progression, thus allowing the preservation of motor programming and execution. Recent findings also point out the possibility to employ TMS to predict cognitive deterioration in the so-called "brains at risk" for dementia, which may be those patients who benefit more of disease-modifying drugs and rehabilitative or neuromodulatory approaches, such as those based on repetitive TMS (rTMS). Finally, TMS can be...
Source: Neural Plasticity - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Neural Plast Source Type: research