Li Yanmin, Wang Lin, Jia Meng, Guo Jihong, Wang Huijun, Wang Mingwei
Department of Neurology, The First Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China.
Brain Aging and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory of Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China.
PLoS One. 2017 Jun 14;12(6):e0179430. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179430. eCollection 2017.
A large body of evidence suggests that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is clinically effective in treating neuropsychiatric disorders and multiple sessions are commonly used. However, it is unknown whether multiple sessions of rTMS improve cognitive control, which is a function of the neural circuitry of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)-cingulate cortex in healthy individuals. In addition, it is still unclear which stages of neural processing are altered by rTMS. In this study, we investigated the effects of high-frequency rTMS on cognitive control and explored the time course changes of cognitive processing after rTMS using event-related potentials (ERPs). For seven consecutive days, 25 young healthy participants underwent one 10-Hz rTMS session per day in which stimulation was applied over the left DLPFC, and a homogeneous participant group of 25 individuals received a sham rTMS treatment. A Stroop task was performed, and an electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. The results revealed that multiple sessions of rTMS can decrease reaction time (RTs) under both congruent and incongruent conditions and also increased the amplitudes of both N2 and N450 compared with sham rTMS. The negative correlations between the mean amplitudes of both N2 and N450 and the RTs were found, however, the latter correlation were restricted to incongruent trials and the correlation was enhanced significantly by rTMS. This observation supports the view that high-frequency rTMS over the left DLPFC can not only recruit more neural resources from the prefrontal cortex by inducing an electrophysiologically excitatory effect but also enhance efficiency of resources to deploy for conflict resolution during multiple stages of cognitive control processing in healthy young people.
大量证据表明，重复经颅磁刺激（rTMS）在治疗神经精神疾病方面具有临床疗效，且通常采用多次治疗。然而，尚不清楚多次rTMS治疗是否能改善认知控制，认知控制是健康个体左背外侧前额叶皮质（DLPFC）-扣带皮质神经回路的一项功能。此外，rTMS改变神经加工的哪些阶段仍不清楚。在本研究中，我们研究了高频rTMS对认知控制的影响，并使用事件相关电位（ERP）探讨了rTMS后认知加工的时间进程变化。25名年轻健康参与者连续7天每天接受一次10赫兹rTMS治疗，刺激施加于左侧DLPFC，另有25名同质参与者接受假rTMS治疗。进行了Stroop任务，并记录了脑电图（EEG）。结果显示，与假rTMS相比，多次rTMS治疗可缩短一致和不一致条件下的反应时间（RTs），并增加N2和N450的波幅。发现N2和N450的平均波幅与RTs之间存在负相关，然而，后者的相关性仅限于不一致试验，且rTMS显著增强了这种相关性。这一观察结果支持了这样一种观点，即对左侧DLPFC进行高频rTMS不仅可以通过诱导电生理兴奋效应从额叶前皮质募集更多神经资源，还可以提高健康年轻人在认知控制加工多个阶段用于解决冲突的资源效率。
