Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Cognitive Enhancement: Present State and Possibilities for the Near Future
摘要
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has the capacity to enhance performance in cognitive tasks in healthy adults. Reports of performance increases caused by TMS have become common, and a search of the extant literature found over 100 examples in peer-reviewed research, listed here. The size of these increases in general has been modest, but in this chapter, we develop the case that in the near future a technology utilizing TMS will be developed that could be a tool to accelerate cognitive skill learning, and possibly do so beyond a level that may have been achieved by an individual without augmentation by TMS. As is described here, the number and variety of TMS performance enhancements already found, the development of understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying them, and an example of the rational development of an enhancement paradigm successfully accomplished all provide the groundwork for a TMS enhancement technology. The present prediction is that its advancement by more fully integrating brain imaging, EEG, and computational modeling into its methods along the lines suggested here will lead to strong forms of TMS augmentation of cognitive skills.