Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Applications in the Study of Executive Functions: A Review

Executive functions (EFs) are a set of advanced cognitive functions essential for human survival and behavioral regulation. Understanding neurophysiological mechanisms of EFs as well as exploring methods to enhance them are still challenging problems in cognitive neuroscience. In recent years, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been widely used in the field of EF research and has made notable progress. This article aimed to discuss the impact of TMS technology on EF research from both basic and applied research perspectives.

We searched for literature on TMS and EFs published in the last decade (2013-2023) and reviewed how TMS has been applied in the field of EF.

We found that the combination of TMS with neuroimaging techniques was helpful in exploring the brain mechanisms of EFs and investigating the executive dysfunctions caused by other neuropsychiatric disorders. Moreover, TMS could be considered as one of the most important techniques to enhance EFs among patient populations, even healthy people, with high safety and credibility. Meanwhile, we discussed the application of TMS in the research of EFs and made suggestions for future research directions. We suggested that a multidisciplinary structure of methods such as epigenetics and endocrinology could be integrated with TMS for investigating deeper in EF domains, and a substantial number of high-quality clinical studies are required to further elucidate the effects of TMS on EFs.

TMS holds great promise for gaining insight into investigating the neural mechanisms of EFs and improving executive functions among different populations.