Motor skill performance is associated with early changes in corticospinal excitability (CSE), yet the influence of rest periods surrounding motor activity on these neurophysiological responses remain...

This study examined how acute alcohol exposure affects brain cortical activity in 34 healthy adults using TMS-EEG. Measurements were taken before, 30 min after, and 120 min after intoxication. Alcoho....

This study investigated whether a single session of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), specifically theta burst stimulation (TBS), acutely modulates visual function under conditions o...

How the brain controls rhythmic asymmetric bimanual movements remains an enduring question in neuroscience. Prior research suggests that the right dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) is essential for maintai...

Intercepting a moving target requires integrating visual motion information with motor preparation, yet how active motor preparation and gaze strategy jointly shape corticospinal excitability during interception planning remains unclear. We applied single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation over primary motor cortex to probe corticospinal excitability while participants either prepared to intercept a moving target or passively viewed its motion. Targets moved at one of two speeds, and participants judged target speed relative to a reference after each trial. Across blocks, participants were instructed to either smoothly pursue the target or fixate their eyes on the interception zone. Motor-evoked potentials were elicited at baseline, after task instruction, early during target motion, or shortly before target arrival. Task and gaze strategy interacted to influence both perceptual judgments and corticospinal excitability. Preparing to intercept produced a robust facilitation of corticospinal excitability immediately before movement onset, regardless of gaze strategy. In contrast, corticospinal excitability during passive viewing did not differ from baseline. Smooth pursuit improved perceptual accuracy and reduced interception timing error compared with fixation but did not independently influence corticospinal facilitation. These findings demonstrate that active motor preparation is the primary determinant of the transition to a state of facilitated excitability during interception planning, whereas eye movements modulate perceptual estimates and support behavioral performance.

As a noninvasive neuromodulation technique, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) offers insights into motor system physiology through motor-evoked potentials (MEPs). In the present study, we applied a factorization approach to multimuscle MEPs to characterize the pattern-level structure of corticospinal outputs beyond conventional per-muscle amplitude measures. To evaluate this approach, we analyzed multimuscle MEP datasets from three experiments in healthy young adults focusing on different stimulus parameters: stimulus intensity (experiment 1: n = 40), motor mapping size (experiment 2: n = 35), and activation of intracortical circuits by a paired-pulse TMS paradigm (experiment 3: n = 20). We extracted motor-evoked modules (MEMs) using non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) and compared their structure across different stimulus conditions. MEM structure was impacted by stimulus intensity, and these findings indicate that stimulus intensity shapes the pattern-level structure of corticospinal outputs. Varying motor mapping size had only a minor impact on MEM structure, suggesting that the pattern-level structure of corticospinal outputs elicited by TMS was stable across mapping extents. Activation of intracortical inhibition appeared to alter MEM structure compared with single-pulse TMS. These findings suggest that paired-pulse activation of intracortical inhibition may alter the pattern-level structure of corticospinal outputs. The MEM framework allows us to characterize the pattern-level structure of corticospinal outputs beyond single-muscle MEPs; thus, MEMs obtained from TMS complement well-established single-muscle MEP analyses and offer a novel perspective for investigating the motor system.

Changes in nervous system with age are responsible for reduced muscle force-generating capacity (i.e., MVC). This meta-analysis reveals that older adults exhibited lower resting corticospinal excitab...

In the present study, we demonstrate that observing transitive and intransitive movements engages the Action Observation Network through shared circuits, which are expressed with distinct spatiotempo...

Ticklishness is a familiar but poorly understood experience. Xiong and Kilteni show that ticklishness is culturally shared and follows a distinct bodily topography. They evaluate different theories on...

Resources, data and code to help you run a TMS laboratory - TMSMultiLab/TMSMultiLab

Background The therapeutic efficacy of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is highly dependent on the selection of stimulation parameters. Different parameter combinations for the same disease may...

Spinal root magnetic stimulation can be used to assess diaphragm voluntary activation (VA), but its validity during inspiratory efforts remains unclear. Additionally, its use to evaluate abdominal muscle VA during expiratory efforts has not been explored. This study investigates spinal root magnetic stimulation as a method to assess VA of inspiratory and expiratory muscles. In thirteen healthy participants (8 female, 18-40 years), magnetic stimulation was delivered over the cervical spine (C6) and lower thoracic spine (T10), to activate the diaphragm (n=11) during inspiratory efforts and the abdominal muscles (n=11) during expiratory efforts, respectively. A nasogastric catheter recorded inspiratory transdiaphragmatic and expiratory gastric pressures. During voluntary 25%/50%/75%/100% maximal inspiratory and expiratory efforts, stimuli were delivered at 100% stimulator output to produce a superimposed twitch and, ~5 seconds later, a resting twitch, to calculate VA. Good utility of the technique was assessed per individual as r2≥0.7 and 95% prediction interval (95%PI) limits within 25% of the predicted VA. For inspiratory muscles, VA had poor correspondence and predictability [r2=(0.26-0.85); 95%PI limits: (27.1-74.5%)] with contraction intensity in 8/11 participants and good correspondence and predictability [r2=(0.83-0.90); 95%PI limits: (22.7-23.8%)] in 3/11 participants. For expiratory muscles, VA had good correspondence and predictability [r2=(0.73-0.97); 95%PI limits: (10.4-20.8%)] with contraction intensity in 7/11 participants and poor correspondence and predictability [r2=(0.13-0.72); 95%PI limits: (19.0-40.0%)] in 4/11 participants. Spinal root magnetic stimulation can be used with caveats to assess expiratory muscle VA only, requiring individualised testing across multiple contraction intensities and a comparison of estimated vs. measured resting twitches.

Custom TMS coils designs for single and multi-locus stimulation of the cerebellum, Salas Moreno, Victor, Vilchez Membrilla, Jose A, Shalamov, Roman, Rissanen, Ilkka, Pantoja, Mario F, Cobos Sanchez, C...

Scientific Reports - An automated derivative-based method for detection of motor evoked potential onset latencies in multi-muscle transcranial magnetic stimulation studies