Neuro‐cardiac‐guided transcranial magnetic stimulation: Unveiling the modulatory effects of low‐frequency and high‐frequency stimulation on heart rate

Abstract Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is pivotal in the field of major depressive disorder treatment. Due to its unsatisfied response rate, an increasing number of researchers have turned their attention towards optimizing TMS site localization. Since the influence of TMS in reducing heart rate (HR) offers insights into its regulatory impact on the autonomic nervous system, a novel approach, called neurocardiac‐guided TMS (NCG–TMS), has been proposed to pinpoint the brain region eliciting the maximal individual reduction in HR as a personalized optimal stimulation target. The present study intends to systematically explore the effects of stimulation frequency, left and right hemispheres, stimulation positions, and individual differences on HR modulation using the NCG–TMS method. In experiment 1, low‐frequency TMS was administered to 30 subjects, and it was found that low‐frequency NCG–TMS significantly downregulated HR, with more significant effects in the right hemisphere than in the left hemisphere and the prefrontal cortex than in other brain areas. In experiment 2, high‐frequency NCG–TMS stimulation was administered to 30 subjects, showing that high‐frequency NCG–TMS also downregulated HR and had the greatest modulatory effect in the right prefrontal region. Simultaneously, both experiments revealed sizeable individual variability in the optimal stimulation site, which in turn validated the feasibility of the NCG–TMS method. In conclusion, the present experiments independently replicated the effect of NCG–TMS, provided an effect of high‐/low‐frequency TMS stimulation to downregulate HR, and identified a right lateralization of the HR modulation effect.