Memory for personally-relevant past events (episodic memory) is critical for activities of daily living. Decline in this type of declarative long-term memory is a common characteristic of healthy ageing, a process accelerated in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) has been used as a strategy to ameliorate episodic memory. Here, we critically review studies investigating whether tES may improve episodic memory in physiological and pathological ageing.

Most of the studies suggest that tES over the prefrontal or temporoparietal cortices can have a positive effect on episodic memory, but the transfer to improvement of execution of daily living activities is still unknown. Further work is needed to better understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of stimulation, combine tES with neuroimaging and optimizing the dosing of stimulation. Future studies should also investigate the optimal timing of stimulation and the combination with medications to induce long-lasting beneficial effects in pathological ageing.

More open science efforts should be done to improve rigor and reliability of tES in ageing research.

与个人相关的过去事件的记忆（时间记忆）对于日常生活活动至关重要。这种声明性长期记忆的下降是健康老龄化的一个共同特征，在轻度认知障碍（MCI）和阿尔茨海默氏病（AD）患者中加速了这一过程。

经颅电刺激（tES）已被用作改善情景记忆的策略。在这里，我们批判性地回顾了研究，即tES是否可以改善生理和病理性衰老中的情节记忆。

大多数研究表明，在额叶前额叶或颞顶皮质上的tES可以对发作性记忆产生积极影响，但是如何改善日常活动的执行仍是未知的。需要做进一步的工作来更好地理解刺激作用的潜在机制，将tES与神经成像相结合并优化刺激剂量。未来的研究还应该研究刺激的最佳时机以及与药物组合以诱导病理性衰老的长期有益作用。

应该采取更加开放的科学努力，以提高老化研究中tES的严格性和可靠性。