A questionnaire to collect unintended effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation: A consensus based approach.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been widely used in both clinical and research practice. However, TMS might induce unintended sensations and undesired effects as well as serious adverse effects. To date, no shared forms are available to report such unintended effects. This study aimed at developing a questionnaire enabling reporting of TMS unintended effects. A Delphi procedure was applied which allowed consensus among TMS experts. A steering committee nominated a number of experts to be involved in the Delphi procedure. Three rounds were conducted before reaching a consensus. Afterwards, the questionnaire was publicized on the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology website to collect further suggestions by the wider scientific community. A last Delphi round was then conducted to obtain consensus on the suggestions collected during the publicization and integrate them in the questionnaire. The procedure resulted in a questionnaire, that is the TMSens_Q, applicable in clinical and research settings. Routine use of the structured TMS questionnaire and standard reporting of unintended TMS effects will help to monitor the safety of TMS, particularly when applying new protocols. It will also improve the quality of data collection as well as the interpretation of experimental findings.

Evaluation of Motor Imagery-Based BCI methods in neurorehabilitation of Parkinson's Disease patients.

The study reports the performance of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients to operate Motor-Imagery based Brain-Computer Interface (MI-BCI) and compares three selected pre-processing and classification approaches. The experiment was conducted on 7 PD patients who performed a total of 14 MI-BCI sessions targeting lower extremities. EEG was recorded during the initial calibration phase of each session, and the specific BCI models were produced by using Spectrally weighted Common Spatial Patterns (SpecCSP), Source Power Comodulation (SPoC) and Filter-Bank Common Spatial Patterns (FBCSP) methods. The results showed that FBCSP outperformed SPoC in terms of accuracy, and both SPoC and SpecCSP in terms of the false-positive ratio. The study also demonstrates that PD patients were capable of operating MI-BCI, although with lower accuracy.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation in developmental stuttering: Relations with previous neurophysiological research and future perspectives.

Developmental stuttering (DS) is a disruption of the rhythm of speech, and affected people may be unable to execute fluent voluntary speech. There are still questions about the exact causes of DS. Evidence suggests there are differences in the structure and functioning of motor systems used for preparing, executing, and controlling motor acts, especially when they are speech related. Much research has been obtained using neuroimaging methods, ranging from functional magnetic resonance to diffusion tensor imaging and electroencephalography/magnetoencephalography. Studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in DS have been uncommon until recently. This is surprising considering the relationship between the functionality of the motor system and DS, and the wide use of TMS in motor-related disturbances such as Parkinson's Disease, Tourette's Syndrome, and dystonia. Consequently, TMS could shed further light on motor aspects of DS. The present work aims to investigate the use of TMS for understanding DS neural mechanisms by reviewing TMS papers in the DS field. Until now, TMS has contributed to the understanding of the excitatory/inhibitory ratio of DS motor functioning, also helping to better understand and critically review evidence about stuttering mechanisms obtained from different techniques, which allowed the investigation of cortico-basal-thalamo-cortical and white matter/connection dysfunctions.