Song Shengxue, Guo Zhiwei, Mu Qiwen
Department of Radiology of The Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, China.
Department of Radiology and Institute of Rehabilitation and Imaging of Brain Function, The Second Clinical Medical College of North Sichuan Medical College Nanchong Central Hospital, Nanchong, China.
Dement Geriatr Cogn Dis Extra. 2025 Apr 2;15(1):58-68. doi: 10.1159/000545553. eCollection 2025 Jan-Dec.
The aim of this study was to investigate whether exposure to noninvasive brain stimulation with high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) applied over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) can improve memory and regulate white matter (WM) microstructure.
Twenty-two mild cognitive impairment participants who were randomly assigned to the real and the sham groups received 10 sessions and sham-controlled 10 Hz rTMS over the DLPFC. All patients underwent cognitive assessments and diffusion tensor imaging scans before and after the intervention. Brain regions that showed significant differences in fractional anisotropy (FA) values were selected as the regions of interest to calculate the correlation with cognitive scores.
In the real group, FA values in the left middle frontal gyrus and bilateral parahippocampal gyrus increased and in the right superior frontal gyrus decreased. No significant FA change was detected in the sham group. Furthermore, the FA value of the left middle frontal gyrus was positively correlated with Boston Naming Test (BNT) scores. The change of FA value in the right superior frontal gyrus was positively correlated with the change in the Trail Making Test (TMT-B) score.
This study provides new evidence for rTMS to regulate the abnormal WM microstructure in some special regions and causally ameliorate cognitive performance in MCI, which may be the underlying neural mechanism of intervention.
本研究旨在探讨对左侧背外侧前额叶皮质（DLPFC）施加高频重复经颅磁刺激（rTMS）进行非侵入性脑刺激是否能改善记忆并调节白质（WM）微观结构。
22名轻度认知障碍参与者被随机分为真刺激组和假刺激组，在DLPFC接受10次10 Hz的rTMS真刺激和假刺激对照。所有患者在干预前后均接受认知评估和扩散张量成像扫描。选择分数各向异性（FA）值有显著差异的脑区作为感兴趣区域，以计算其与认知分数的相关性。
在真刺激组中，左侧额中回和双侧海马旁回的FA值增加，右侧额上回的FA值降低。假刺激组未检测到显著的FA变化。此外，左侧额中回的FA值与波士顿命名测试（BNT）分数呈正相关。右侧额上回FA值的变化与连线测验B（TMT-B）分数的变化呈正相关。
本研究为rTMS调节某些特定区域的异常WM微观结构并因果性改善MCI患者的认知表现提供了新证据，这可能是干预的潜在神经机制。
