Malignant brain tumours are among the most aggressive human cancers, and despite intensive efforts made over the last decades, patients’ survival has scarcely improved. Recently, high-grade gliomas (HGG) have been found to be electrically integrated with healthy brain tissue, a communication that facilitates tumour mitosis and invasion. This link to neuronal activity has provided new insights into HGG pathophysiology and opened prospects for therapeutic interventions based on electrical modulation of neural and synaptic activity in the proximity of tumour cells, which could potentially slow tumour growth. Noninvasive brain stimulation (NiBS), a group of techniques used in research and clinical settings to safely modulate brain activity and plasticity via electromagnetic or electrical stimulation, represents an appealing class of interventions to characterise and target the electrical properties of tumour-neuron interactions. Beyond neuronal activity, NiBS may also modulate function of a range of substrates and dynamics that locally interacts with HGG (e.g., vascular architecture, perfusion and blood-brain barrier permeability). Here we discuss emerging applications of NiBS in patients with brain tumours, covering potential mechanisms of action at both cellular, regional, network and whole-brain levels, also offering a conceptual roadmap for future research to prolong survival or promote wellbeing via personalised NiBS interventions.

恶性脑肿瘤是最具侵袭性的人类癌症之一，尽管在过去几十年中付出了巨大的努力，但患者的生存率几乎没有改善。最近，人们发现高级别神经胶质瘤（HGG）与健康脑组织电整合，这种通讯促进肿瘤有丝分裂和侵袭。这种与神经元活动的联系为 HGG 病理生理学提供了新的见解，并为基于肿瘤细胞附近神经和突触活动的电调节的治疗干预开辟了前景，这可能会减缓肿瘤的生长。无创脑刺激 (NiBS) 是一组用于研究和临床环境中的技术，通过电磁或电刺激安全地调节大脑活动和可塑性，代表了一类有吸引力的干预措施，用于表征和针对肿瘤-神经元相互作用的电特性。除了神经元活动之外，NiBS 还可以调节与 HGG 局部相互作用的一系列底物的功能和动力学（例如血管结构、灌注和血脑屏障通透性）。在这里，我们讨论 NiBS 在脑肿瘤患者中的新兴应用，涵盖细胞、区域、网络和全脑水平的潜在作用机制，并为未来研究提供概念路线图，以通过个性化 NiBS 干预来延长生存或促进福祉。