Abstract
Despite numerous clinical studies, which have investigated the therapeutic potential of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in various brain diseases, our knowledge of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying rTMS-based therapies remains limited. Thus, a deeper understanding of rTMS-induced neural plasticity is required to optimize current treatment protocols. Studies in small animals or appropriate in vitro preparations (including models of brain diseases) provide highly useful experimental approaches in this context. State-of-the-art electrophysiological and live-cell imaging techniques that are well established in basic neuroscience can help answering some of the major questions in the field, such as (i) which neural structures are activated during TMS, (ii) how does rTMS induce Hebbian plasticity, and (iii) are other forms of plasticity (e.g., metaplasticity, structural plasticity) induced by rTMS? We argue that data gained from these studies will support the development of more effective and specific applications of rTMS in clinical practice.
INTRODUCTION
, an Italian physician from Bologna, was among the first to demonstrate that electrical energy drives body function. He reported that the stimulation of the frog’s sciatic nerve with a metal rod (charged with static electricity) caused contractions of the innervated muscle. Ever since this observation the question of how electrical signals in neural tissue translate into complex human behavior, both under physiological and pathological conditions, has attracted the interest of scientists and physicians around the world. Two centuries after Galvani’s famous experiments, Barker and colleagues carried out a set of analogous experiments in human subjects. To evoke muscle contractions though, stimulated the brain, i.e., the motor cortex, of their subjects by employing a novel non-invasive stimulation technique termed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). These experiments opened several new scientific avenues and provided a means to non-invasively assess cortical excitability and function in patients with brain diseases (for review see, ).
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is based on the physical principle of electromagnetic induction: a strong electric current of up to several kA is discharged briefly (<1 ms duration) through a TMS coil. This generates a short-lived, but strong electromagnetic field, which penetrates the scalp and skull and induces an electric field in the underlying brain tissue. By this mechanism TMS allows for the non-invasive activation of the cerebral cortex in awake and non-anesthetized human subjects (Figure 1A). More recently, experimental evidence has been provided that repetitive TMS (rTMS), i.e., trains of several hundred pulses can change the excitability of the human cortex for hours beyond the stimulation period (for review see, Ziemann et al., 2008). This observation has driven interest toward a therapeutic use of rTMS in neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders associated with alterations in cortical excitability (Ziemann, 2005; ; ). However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying rTMS-induced neural plasticity remain not well understood. Considering data, which demonstrate a substantial inter- and intra-individual variability of rTMS-induced after-effects (; ; ), a better understanding of how TMS affects neural tissue is urgently needed.
FIGURE 1
Repetitive magnetic stimulation (rMS) of small animals and appropriate in vitro preparations represent suitable and highly useful experimental approaches in this context (Figures 1B,C). Several of these models have already been used successfully (e.g.,
WHAT MAKES TMS DISTINCT FROM LOCAL ELECTRICAL STIMULATION?
In contrast to local electrical stimulation, i.e., a classic experimental approach to induce long-term structural and functional changes of neurons (
WHICH NEURAL STRUCTURES ARE ACTIVATED DURING TMS?
While evidence has been provided that axons are the primary target of TMS (Figure 2A;
FIGURE 2

Effects of repetitive TMS (rTMS) on single neurons within a network.(A) During TMS axons with a particular orientation within the induced electric field are depolarized. This leads to anterograde propagating action potentials (aAP). In addition, TMS may also initiate backward propagating APs (bAP) in the target neuron, or even directly depolarize specific dendritic segments (indicated by orange color). TMS-effects on other neural structures, e.g., glial cells (astrocytes, microglia, oligodendrocytes) have not been investigated so far. The role of local circuits (e.g., recurrent networks, feed-forward, and feed-back inhibition) needs to be determined in this context as well. (B) Illustration of potential direct or indirect molecular targets of rTMS. For further details please see text [SA, spine apparatus organelle (
Clearly, electrophysiological recordings of intact animals or suitable in vitro preparations represent the gold standard approach to determine the effects of TMS during stimulation. While local field potential recordings (e.g., single- or multi-electrode recordings) allow for the assessment of neural population activity (down to the level of single units), patch-clamp recordings (single- or multi-cell recordings, dual somato-dendritic recordings, recordings from astrocytes) are required to directly record TMS-induced changes in voltage, current, and firing rate of individual cells. However, these (and other suitable electrophysiological) experiments are not trivial to perform during stimulation due to the strong electromagnetic field that is generated by TMS.
An interesting solution to this problem is optical functional imaging (
HOW DOES rTMS INDUCE NEURAL PLASTICITY?
During the past years experimental evidence has emerged which suggests that rTMS-induced after-effects are mediated by “long-term potentiation (LTP)-like” mechanisms (Ziemann et al., 2008). This “evidence” is based on physiological characteristics and pharmacological analogies between studies performed at the system level in human subjects and data obtained from animal models using classic LTP-experiments (see,
Apparently, these considerations do not take the specific fiber and cytoarchitecture of the stimulated network into account. It will therefore be important to compare the effects of a given r(T)MS-protocol in different brain regions (e.g., hippocampal region CA1 vs. dentate gyrus; ideally different neocortical regions). These studies can provide new important insights on the role of local circuitries in rTMS-induced plasticity. As discussed by
ARE OTHER FORMS OF PLASTICITY INDUCED BY rTMS
Several studies in human subjects have demonstrated rTMS-effects on cortical plasticity in the absence of detectable after-effects on cortical excitability (e.g.,
A straightforward approach to test for rMS-induced metaplasticity at the cellular level is combining rMS-experiments with classic LTP- or long-term depression (LTD)-protocols (i.e., local high- or low-frequency electrical stimulation). Our work in organotypic slice cultures (
ARE STRUCTURAL CHANGES OF NEURONS INDUCED BY rTMS?
The induction of structural plasticity, i.e., the activity-dependent re-wiring of neuronal networks is another interesting mechanism by which rTMS could assert long-lasting effects on neuronal circuits. Changes in dendritic spine/synapse numbers, dendritic remodeling, and/or axonal sprouting can all affect connectivity and thus function of neuronal networks. During the past decade advances in live-cell imaging and in vivo microscopy have made it possible to monitor structural plasticity for long periods of time (weeks and months) at high resolution both in vitro and in vivo (
HOW CAN KNOWLEDGE ON THE CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR MECHANISMS OF rTMS BE TRANSLATED INTO CLINICAL PRACTICE?
A major advantage of investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms of rMS using appropriate animal models or in vitro preparations (e.g., of the hippocampus or neocortex) is the fact that various forms of plasticity (LTP/LTD, STDP of excitatory and inhibitory synapses, intrinsic cellular plasticity, metaplasticity, structural plasticity) have been studied in great detail using these models during the past decades. Data on rMS-induced neural plasticity can therefore be compared with results obtained in these in vivo or in vitro studies, which will facilitate the identification of the molecular mechanisms underlying rTMS-induced plasticity.
Since animal models of a large variety of brain diseases exist, it will be important to also study mechanisms of rTMS-induced neural plasticity in these models. Together with experiments performed under physiological conditions this knowledge will be helpful in addressing some of the current limitations/questions regarding the therapeutic use of rTMS. For example, it is not clear how rTMS-induced Hebbian plasticity, i.e., an increase in cortical excitability independent of a specific task, links to behavioral effects and could thus modulate the course of a neurological/neuropsychiatric disease. Accordingly, future studies in animal models need to address the question of whether it is rTMS-induced Hebbian plasticity and/or the induction of metaplasticity and/or interference with other plasticity-forms such as structural plasticity [or denervation-induced homeostatic plasticity (Vlachos et al., 2013)], which underlies the therapeutic effects of rTMS. These studies will also be helpful to confirm (or re-interpret) results obtained in human studies in which rTMS has been applied in conjunction with pharmacological treatments (e.g.,
Eventually the knowledge gained from animal studies may be translated into clinical practice (i) by optimizing the efficacy and specificity of the stimulation to induce and/or modulate certain forms of neural plasticity with rTMS; (ii) by using knowledge about the state-dependency of rTMS-induced plasticity (e.g., by understanding the role of genetic polymorphisms, neuromodulators, metaplasticity, or homeostatic synaptic plasticity); or (iii) by combining rTMS with pharmacological interventions in order to support specific rTMS effects [an approach termed “pharmaco-TMS”; (Ziemann, 2011)]. A better knowledge of the cellular and molecular mechanisms of rMS will therefore help to optimize rTMS-based therapies and could be a step toward “personalized” rTMS-treatments of patients with neurological or neuropsychiatric diseases.
Statements
Acknowledgments
We thank Drs. T. Deller, P. Jedlicka, and U. Ziemann for helpful discussions.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Summary
Keywords
non-invasive brain stimulation, neurological diseases, neuropsychiatric disorders, Hebbian plasticity, metaplasticity, structural plasticity
Citation
Müller-Dahlhaus F and Vlachos A (2013) Unraveling the cellular and molecular mechanisms of repetitive magnetic stimulation. Front. Mol. Neurosci. 6:50. doi: 10.3389/fnmol.2013.00050
Received
29 September 2013
Accepted
29 November 2013
Published
17 December 2013
Volume
6 - 2013
Edited by
Jean Rossier, Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris, France
Reviewed by
Marc A. Maier, Université Paris Diderot, France; Xavier Moisset, INSERM U1107, France; Daniel Ciampi De Andrade, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Copyright
© 2013 Müller-Dahlhaus and Vlachos.
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*Correspondence: Andreas Vlachos, Institute of Clinical Neuroanatomy, Neuroscience Center, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Theodor-Stern Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail: a.vlachos@med.uni-frankfurt.de
This article was submitted to the journal Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience.
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