Subjective discomfort of TMS predicts reaction times differences in published studies

Holmes, N. and Meteyard, L. (2018) Subjective discomfort of TMS predicts reaction times differences in published studies. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. 1989. ISSN 1664-1078 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01989

Abstract/Summary

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was developed thirty years ago, in part to decrease the peripheral side-effects associated with transcranial electrical stimulation (Barker, 1991). TMS has been effective in that aim, and great advances have been made over the past 30 years. TMS can still be uncomfortable and painful, however, as it stimulates excitable superficial tissue including scalp muscles and peripheral nerves (Maizey et al., 2013). This causes annoyance, pain, and muscle twitches (i.e., discomfort) that vary systematically across the scalp (Meteyard & Holmes, 2018). For this Opinion, we investigated whether the TMS-related discomfort measured in our previous work could predict the reported differences in RT in studies published in the last 10 years. For single-pulse TMS studies, differences in RT between TMS and control conditions were significantly correlated with both the mean of median ratings of muscle twitches, and the mean effect of TMS on RT from Meteyard & Holmes (2018).

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/79480
Identification Number/DOI	10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01989
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Clinical Language Sciences Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Language and Cognition
Publisher	Frontiers Media
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