A Clinical Trial of Transcranial Electromagnetic Treatment in Alzheimer’s Disease: Cognitive Enhancement and Associated Changes in Cerebrospinal Fluid, Blood, and Brain Imaging - IOS Press
https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad190367
As a neuropsychologist, I’m very interested in Bob’s take on this.
Of course the effects of PEMF and TMS on CNS tissue is not my area of expertise, but I have been following these applications with interest. We have gotten a lot of anecdotal reports of pretty significant improvements for people with AD and PD. Usually, the caregiver tells us informally that ICES-PEMF had helped the person in their care. Improved cognition and ADL are what we commonly hear: return to normal activities such as cooking, cleaning, socializing, and reading. But people rarely share more than this with us for AD and PD.
My neurophysiology colleagues tell me that TMS in general seems to be having a lot of beneficial effects. They glean this from the literature and professional meetings, since they do not study this area directly themselves. For the most part their impression is that TMS is probably helpful, but that the intensity typically used in clinical settings (110%MT to 120%MT) is probably unnecessarily high. But so far as I know there is limited information on the minimum effective intensity, so that remains unknown.
My impression: pulsed magnetism therapy seems to be helpful for many types of neurodegenerative disease, but this has not been appreciated by mainstream clinicians. With TMS as an FDA-approved device, and because it does not bear the stigma of the term “PEMF” (even though by definition TMS is a type of PEMF), I think there is a glimmer of hope that TMS will receive more attention both in research and clinical practice for these types of applications.
Thanks for your input Bob!