A group of researchers from the Santa Lucia Foundation IRCCS, led by Giacomo Koch, following a study of Alzheimer's patients, published in the scientific journal NeuroImage, found an improvement in 20% of memory in those patients treated with stimulation sessions of the brain through transcranial magnetic stimulation (Tms).
Transranial magnetic stimulation has been used for several years to treat several neurological deficits and has already been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of drug-resistant forms of depression. International studies are making it increasingly clear that transcranial magnetic stimulation, when applied continuously, shows neurorehabilitative effects even in the treatment of neuromotor and cognitive deficits caused by other diseases, such as cerebral stroke and multiple sclerosis. It is also used for the treatment of anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease.
This therapy (Tms) that generates magnetic fields that cross the skull and are transformed into electrical impulses, thus stimulating the reactivation of the connections between synapses and neurons that are the basis of the exchange of messages between the different areas of our brain and therefore to the base of all its functions, it could help patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease to counter the loss of memory which represents one of the most characteristic and early consequences of the disease.
IRCCS Santa Lucia researchers, wanting to stimulate the memory function, went to act on a particular neural network, the default mode network which, as explained by Marco Bozzali, IRCCS Neurologist of Santa Lucia and Neuroimaging expert, "it is an area located in a central and relatively deep position of the brain - highly connected to the hippocampus, another region always under strong observation when it comes to Alzheimer's disease and memory problems ".
The default mode network also influences our awareness of the environment and of the situation in which we find ourselves at a certain moment, that is, the capacity to be present in things that also progressively deteriorates due to the pathology.
Alongside the study of the neurorehabilitative effects of TMS, the IRCCS Santa Lucia research group is concentrating on the use of therapy as a tool to detect early signs of Alzheimer's disease.