Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Laboratory

Investigating neural applications for TMS

The work focuses on three major areas: examining the effects of low-intensity TMS, employing psychophysics to understand functional effects of TMS and developing new procedures to help with measurements of TMS thresholds.

Our research

Our work combines visual psychophysics and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS); a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that applies using an electromagnetic coil placed on the scalp.

We also utilise a 3D neuronavigation system guided by MRI and fMRI data to accurately stimulate a target brain area.

Vision and Subthreshold TMS

Can TMS improve the detection of visual stimuli? TMS is usually employed to impair visual perception. Here we demonstrate improvement in visual detection using TMS pulse applied below the phosphene threshold.

Effects of TMS on Neural Populations

Should we characterise the functional effect of TMS as noise induction or signal suppression? Data from two studies using either static or moving stimuli are better explained as signal suppression than as noise induction in the brain.

TMS Thresholding Procedures

We have implemented an adaptive staircase procedure to rapidly and accurately estimate phosphene thresholds. The procedure is implemented in Matlab and is available for download.

Resources

Available for public access and download