Bilateral Angular Gyrus 810-nm Transcranial Near-Infrared Stimulation Reshapes Brain Network: Ameliorate Alzheimer's Disease Cognitive Deficits.

The active group improved more than the sham group across several cognitive and neuropsychiatric measures after 15 days. Several gains weakened by the 60-day follow-up, so this small study supports further testing rather than routine treatment conclusions.

Ma X, Yan F, Liu Z, He S, Liu L, Liang J, Yuan M, Wang S, Qu S, Yang S, Gao Y, Qiu H, Li Y, Yang C, Li Y, Li T, Wang Y.
BME frontiers · Publication date: 2026-09-22
Added to site: 2026-09-25
DOI: 10.34133/bmef.0313

Electronic publication date verified in Europe PMC; first indexed 2026-09-24. This source date is separate from the site's addition date.

Modalities

Photobiomodulation, Near-infrared light, TMS-EEG, fMRI

Clinical focus

Alzheimer's disease, Cognition, Brain networks

Population

Right-handed adults aged 50 to 80 with mild Alzheimer's disease confirmed by amyloid or cerebrospinal-fluid biomarkers

Sample

36 adults with mild biomarker-confirmed Alzheimer's disease, 18 active and 18 sham; 16 healthy older adults supplied baseline imaging comparisons

Intervention / method

810-nm transcranial near-infrared stimulation at P3 and P4, 85 mW/cm2 over 0.8 cm2, 20 minutes per side daily for 15 consecutive days

Comparator

Identical-appearing sham procedure with no emitted light, heat, vibration or sound

Clinician summary

All reported time-by-group interactions for the neuropsychological assessments were significant. Mean active-group changes of 2.17 MMSE points and 3.67 ADAS-cog points exceeded thresholds cited by the authors; some outcomes, including MMSE and MoCA, no longer differed from baseline at day 75. No adverse events occurred.

How to interpret the findings

Small single-center sample with multiple cognitive outcomes and limited generalizability. The angular-gyrus targets used scalp P3/P4 positions rather than neuronavigation. fMRI and TMS-EEG were collected only in the active arm, so the network findings cannot exclude time, practice or placebo effects and were not shown to mediate cognitive change.

Equipment and disclosures

Transcranial photoelectric synchronous neuromodulator from Hunan Secrek Medical Technology; 810-nm active light and an identical nonemitting sham spacer. This is source identification, not a device endorsement.

Supported by five Chinese government and public research programs listed in the full text. The authors declared no competing interests.

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