Neurostimulation of brain as non-invasive fibromyalgia treatment

Neurostimulation of brain areas involved in pain processing and control to reduce fibromyalgia symptoms is increasingly under the spotlight. A recent review in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience discusses the potential of transcranial electric stimulation.

It highlights that most studies based on transcranial direct currents that target the primary motor cortex (the area of the brain that controls movement) showed good results on pain measures and less on cognitive and affective symptoms.

Stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain that controls working memory, cognitive flexibility and planning) has been explored in a few studies and seems to be ineffective on pain and has limited effects on cognitive and affective symptoms.

Some new techniques such as high-density transcranial direct currents stimulation and transcranial random noise stimulation have been explored with interesting (if preliminary) results. The future may see more effective, well tolerated, cheap and easy therapeutic approaches to fibromyalgia.

Overall, neurostimulation that aims to reduce fibromyalgia symptoms is an exciting new area of research but more high quality research is needed.

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