Transcranial magnetic stimulation research on reading and dyslexia:a new clinical intervention technique for treating dyslexia?

摘要

Nowadays,several noninvasive neuroimaging techniques,including transcranial magnetic stimulation(TMS),exist.The working mechanism behind TMS is a rapidly changing magnetic field that generates an electric current via electromagnetic induction.When the coil is placed on the scalp,the magnetic field generates a physiological reaction in the underlying neural tissue.The TMS-induced change in the participant’s behavior is used by researchers to investigate the causal relations between specific brain areas and cognitive functions such as language.A variant of TMS has been developed,which is called rapid-rate TMS(rTMS).In this review,three databases(Medline,Educational Resources Information Center,and Scopus)were searched for rTMS studies on normal reading and dyslexia with a cut-off date of October 31,2014.rTMS was found to be a valuable tool for investigating questions related to reading research,both on the word and the sentence level.Moreover,it can be successfully used in research on dyslexia.Recently,(high-frequency)rTMS has been used as a“clinical”intervention technique for treating dyslexia and for improving reading performance by exciting underactive reading pathways in the brain.Finally,we end the paper with a discussion of future directions in the field of rTMS research and dyslexia,for instance,the promising prospect of combining TMS with simultaneous electroencephalographic imaging.