Alzheimer’s disease (AD),
Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB), Parkinson’s disease dementia (PDD) and
frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), account for the predominant cause of
dementia in the population aged ≥ 60 years, with an estimated prevalence of
5-7% in this age-group, escalating to about 30% in the people older than 85.
With the progressive aging of the population, the prevalence of dementia is
estimated to double every 20 years, thus becoming a health- and social-care
priority for many high-income countries. Numerous studies have tried to addressthe challenge of identifying early biological or neuroimaging markers in order
to unravel the physiopathological processes underlying these disorders and to
correctly recognize the earliest stages of disease, when the neurodegenerative
process is still limited and possibly reversible.
In this view, also
neurophysiological techniques, particularly transcranial magnetic stimulation
(TMS), have become promising tools to assess specific cortical circuits in the
central nervous system. Since its introduction, the use of TMS in clinical
neurophysiology, neurology, neuroscience, and psychiatry has spread widely,
leading to important findings on cortical function in physiological and
pathological conditions.Indeed, with the contribution of pharmacological
studies, numerous TMS stimulation paradigms have been developed to assess,non-invasively and in-vivo, the function of GABAergic, glutamatergic and
cholinergic cortical circuits [6]. Furthermore, specific paradigms of paired
associative stimulation (PAS) or repetitive TMS (rTMS) have shown to increase
or decrease the excitability of corticospinal projections of the primary motor
cortex (M1), representing a form of long-term potentiation (LTP) or depression
(LTD) and thus a method of assessing synaptic plasticity.
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