Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) represents a promising tool for studying and influencing cognition in people with neurodegenerative diseases. This procedure is noninvasive and painless, and it does not require the use of anesthesia or pharmacological substances. In this systematic critical review we report outcomes from research focused on behavioral cognitive effects induced by rTMS in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) preceding AD. There are still major limitations to rTMS use, such as a poor understanding of its after-effects and inter-individual variability in their magnitude, discrepancies in stimulation protocols and study designs, varied selection of the specific stimulated areas and control procedures, and neuropsychological methods for assessment of after-effects; hence, the results of the present research can only be considered preliminary. The future directions are discussed.

1st Department of Neurology School of Medicine Masaryk University and St Anne's Teaching Hospital Brno Czech Republic; Applied Neuroscience Research Group Central European Institute of Technology Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

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