Sack Alexander T, Linden David E J
Laboratory for Neurophysiology and Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Heinrich-Hoffmann-Str. 10, 60528, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Brain Res Brain Res Rev. 2003 Sep;43(1):41-56. doi: 10.1016/s0165-0173(03)00191-7.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a widely used tool for the non-invasive study of basic neurophysiological processes and the relationship between brain and behavior. We review the physical and physiological background of TMS and discuss the large body of perceptual and cognitive studies, mainly in the visual domain, that have been performed with TMS in the past 15 years. We compare TMS with other neurophysiological and neuropsychological research tools and propose that TMS, compared with the classical neuropsychological lesion studies, can make its own unique contribution. As the main focus of this review, we describe the different approaches of combining TMS with functional neuroimaging techniques. We also discuss important shortcomings of TMS, especially the limited knowledge concerning its physiological effects, which often make the interpretation of TMS results ambiguous. We conclude with a critical analysis of the resulting conceptual and methodological limitations that the investigation of functional brain-behavior relationships still has to face. We argue that while some of the methodological limitations of TMS applied alone can be overcome by combination with functional neuroimaging, others will persist until its physical and physiological effects can be controlled.
经颅磁刺激（TMS）是一种广泛应用于基础神经生理过程以及大脑与行为关系无创研究的工具。我们回顾了TMS的物理和生理背景，并讨论了过去15年中主要在视觉领域使用TMS进行的大量感知和认知研究。我们将TMS与其他神经生理和神经心理学研究工具进行了比较，并提出与经典神经心理学损伤研究相比，TMS能够做出其独特的贡献。作为本综述的主要重点，我们描述了将TMS与功能性神经成像技术相结合的不同方法。我们还讨论了TMS的重要缺点，特别是关于其生理效应的知识有限，这常常使TMS结果的解释含糊不清。我们最后对功能性脑-行为关系研究仍需面对的由此产生的概念和方法局限性进行了批判性分析。我们认为，虽然单独应用TMS的一些方法局限性可以通过与功能性神经成像相结合来克服，但其他局限性将持续存在，直到其物理和生理效应能够得到控制。
