The Neuroprotection of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Pre-treatment in Vascular Dementia Rats

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a non-invasive technique that could interfere cortical excitability though brief electric currents induced by alternating magnetic fields from the inductive coil. Currently, it has been applied in many fields of basic and clinical neuro-research. The aims of the present study are to investigate the effect of rTMS pre-treatment on cognitive function in vascular dementia (VaD) rats and further explore the molecular mechanism of rTMS neuroprotection on VaD. We found that rTMS pre-treated VaD rats showed significantly better memory and learning abilities in Morris water maze test compared to the untreated group. Moreover, the mRNA and protein expression levels of BDNF, TrkB, and SYN were significantly higher in the rTMS pre-treated group, indicating that rTMS pre-treatment has neuroprotective effect for VaD, which may have resulted from the increased level of BDNF, TrkB, and SYN in the hippocampal CA1 area.