Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation induces protocol and layer specific transcriptomic plasticity in the human cortex

Abstract

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is a popular method of non-invasive brain stimulation used to study the human brain and treat neurological disorders. However, despite over three decades of use, the cellular mechanisms underlying its effects remain unknown which has limited its use. Using spatial transcriptomics on excised human cortical tissue, we characterized and mapped changes to gene expression following stimulation with two common stimulation protocols. We find that repetitive magnetic stimulation alters the expression of genes related to neuronal and glial plasticity mechanisms that were mostly cortical layer, cell type, and protocol dependent. These findings show that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation acts on multiple neural plasticity mechanisms simultaneously in the human brain, which to some extent, can be biased by the stimulation frequency used.