Review Article
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Treatment for Motor Symptoms in Parkinsons Disease: A Review of Two Decades of Studies
Stefano Pallanti1* and Anna Marras2
1University of Florence, Department of Neuroscience, Florence, Italy
2Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, New York, USA
- Corresponding Author:
- Stefano Pallanti
University of Florence
Department of Neuroscience
Florence, Italy
Tel: +390557949707
E-mail: stefanopallanti@yahoo.it
Received date: April 13, 2015; Accepted date: June 29, 2015; Published date: July 06, 2015
Citation: Pallanti S and Marras A (2015) Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Treatment for Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease: A Review of Two Decades of Studies. Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism 5:191. doi:10.4172/2161-0460.1000191
Copyright: ©2015 Pallanti S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
In the last two decades, repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) has been increasingly employed in Parkinson’s disease (PD) to enhance and restore motor function. Different cortical regions have been investigated as treatment targets (i.e. primary motor cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and supplementary motor area) and stimulation parameters (frequency, intensity, number of pulses) showed high heterogeneity between studies. Herein we review 40 studies, both open-label and randomized controlled trials: mixed results have been yielded regarding the effectiveness of rTMS treatment for motor symptoms in PD, due to the high variability of employed protocols, sham procedures and target regions. Although overall results seem to support the notion of potential beneficial effects of rTMS in PD, further research is needed to identify the optimal treatment parameters and to evaluate the potential conjunct use of rTMS in patients with deep brain stimulation (DBS) implants.
