Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research (SNS-Lab), Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Leibniz Research Center for Working Environment and Human Factors, Department of Psychology and Neurosciences, TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany.
Nat Neurosci. 2018 Feb;21(2):174-187. doi: 10.1038/s41593-017-0054-4. Epub 2018 Jan 8.
In the past three decades, our understanding of brain-behavior relationships has been significantly shaped by research using non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques. These methods allow non-invasive and safe modulation of neural processes in the healthy brain, enabling researchers to directly study how experimentally altered neural activity causally affects behavior. This unique property of NIBS methods has, on the one hand, led to groundbreaking findings on the brain basis of various aspects of behavior and has raised interest in possible clinical and practical applications of these methods. On the other hand, it has also triggered increasingly critical debates about the properties and possible limitations of these methods. In this review, we discuss these issues, clarify the challenges associated with the use of currently available NIBS techniques for basic research and practical applications, and provide recommendations for studies using NIBS techniques to establish brain-behavior relationships.
在过去的三十年中，使用非侵入性脑刺激 (NIBS) 技术的研究极大地改变了我们对脑-行为关系的理解。这些方法允许对健康大脑中的神经过程进行非侵入性和安全的调节，使研究人员能够直接研究实验改变的神经活动如何因果地影响行为。NIBS 方法的这种独特特性一方面导致了关于行为各个方面的大脑基础的突破性发现，并引起了对这些方法的可能临床和实际应用的兴趣。另一方面，它也引发了关于这些方法的特性和可能局限性的越来越多的批判性辩论。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了这些问题，阐明了与使用当前可用的 NIBS 技术进行基础研究和实际应用相关的挑战，并为使用 NIBS 技术建立脑-行为关系的研究提供了建议。
