Abstract
We used a double-blind experimental design to look for an effect of pico-Tesla magnetic stimulation in healthy subjects. Pico-Tesla stimulation is thought to increase the dominant frequency of 2–7 Hz oscillations in the human brain. We used magnetoencephalography to measure resting state brain activity. Each subject had two separate recording sessions consisting of three runs in between which they were given real or sham pT stimulation. We then tried to predict the real and sham stimulation sessions based on changes in the mean peak frequency in the 2–7 Hz band. Our predictions for these individual runs were 8 out of 14 at chance level (p = 0.39). After unblinding, we found no significant effect (p = 0.11) of an increase in the frequency range (2–7 Hz) across the subject group. Finally, we performed a Bayesian model comparison between the effect size predicted from previous clinical studies and a null model. Even though this study had a sensitivity advantage of at least one order of magnitude over previous work, we found the null model to be significantly (2000 times) more likely.
Highlights
A number of studies have suggested that pico-Tesla range stimulation has some quantifiable benefit (Anninos et al 1991)
One possible electrophysiological explanation for the efficacy of pico-Tesla-magneticstimulation has been provided by the proposed ‘neural net model’ (Anninos et al 1989) which suggests that magnetic stimulation causes a temporally modulated neuronal inhibition in regions exhibiting abnormal activity in the frequency range of 2–7 Hz
The second column shows the change in mean peak frequency in the 2–7 Hz band between the average peak frequency in runs A and B as compared to C; and the third column shows the average peak frequency in runs A and C as compared to run B or ‘C sham’
Summary
One possible electrophysiological explanation for the efficacy of pico-Tesla-magneticstimulation (pTMS) has been provided by the proposed ‘neural net model’ (Anninos et al 1989) which suggests that magnetic stimulation causes a temporally modulated neuronal inhibition in regions exhibiting abnormal activity in the frequency range of 2–7 Hz. One possible electrophysiological explanation for the efficacy of pico-Tesla-magneticstimulation (pTMS) has been provided by the proposed ‘neural net model’ (Anninos et al 1989) which suggests that magnetic stimulation causes a temporally modulated neuronal inhibition in regions exhibiting abnormal activity in the frequency range of 2–7 Hz This hypothesis is in concordance with data presented by other investigators (John 1967, Kaczmarek and Adey 1974, Ossenkopp and Cain 1988). This technique is regularly used in the Government General University Hospital, Laboratory of Medical Physics in the School of Medicine of DUTH University in Greece (Anninos et al 1991, 2000, 2006, 2007, 2008). In this study we set out to show the effect of pT stimulation in healthy subjects using state of the art magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recording protocols and a double blind experimental design
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