Low-Frequency Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of the Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Enhances Recognition Memory in Alzheimer's Disease.

BACKGROUND

The lack of effective pharmacological or behavioral interventions for memory impairments associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) emphasizes the need for the investigation of approaches based on neuromodulation.

OBJECTIVE

This study examined the effects of inhibitory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of prefrontal cortex on recognition memory in AD patients.

METHODS

In a first experiment, 24 mild AD patients received sham and real 1Hz rTMS over the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), in different sessions, between encoding and retrieval phases of a non-verbal recognition memory task. In a second experiment, another group of 14 AD patients underwent sham controlled repeated sessions of 1Hz rTMS of the right DLPFC across a two week treatment. Non-verbal recognition memory task was performed at baseline, at the end of the two weeks period and at a follow up of 1 month.

RESULTS

Right real rTMS significantly improved memory performance compared to right sham rTMS (p = 0.001). Left real rTMS left the memory performance unchanged as compared with left sham rTMS (p = 0.46). The two sham conditions did not differ between each other (p = 0.24). In the second experiment, AD patients treated with real rTMS showed an improvement of memory performance at the end of the two weeks treatment (p = 0.0009), that persisted at 1-month follow-up (p = 0.002).

CONCLUSION

These findings provide evidence that inhibitory rTMS over the right DLPFC can improve recognition memory function in AD patients. They also suggest the importance of a new approach of non-invasive brain stimulation as a promising treatment in AD.