Théoret Hugo, Halligan Erin, Kobayashi Masahito, Merabet Lotfi, Pascual-Leone Alvaro
Laboratory for Magnetic Brain Stimulation, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, 330 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Exp Brain Res. 2004 Mar;155(2):261-4. doi: 10.1007/s00221-003-1820-y. Epub 2004 Jan 24.
The neuronal effects of sensory events that do not enter conscious awareness have been reported in numerous pathological conditions and in normal subjects. In the present study, unconscious modulation of corticospinal excitability was probed in healthy volunteers with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). TMS-induced motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were collected from the first dorsal interosseus muscle while subjects performed a masked semantic priming task that has been shown to elicit covert motor cortex activations. Our data show that the amplitude of the MEPs is modulated by an unseen prime, in line with temporal patterns revealed with event related potentials. These data confirm previous reports showing specific motor neural responses associated with an unseen visual stimulus and establish TMS as a valuable tool in the study of the neural correlates of consciousness.
在众多病理状况以及正常受试者中，均有关于未进入意识觉知的感觉事件所产生的神经元效应的报道。在本研究中，运用经颅磁刺激（TMS）对健康志愿者的皮质脊髓兴奋性的无意识调节进行了探究。当受试者执行一项已被证明能引发隐蔽性运动皮层激活的掩蔽语义启动任务时，从第一背侧骨间肌采集TMS诱发的运动诱发电位（MEP）。我们的数据表明，MEP的幅度受到一个不可见启动刺激的调节，这与事件相关电位所揭示的时间模式一致。这些数据证实了先前的报道，即显示出与不可见视觉刺激相关的特定运动神经反应，并确立了TMS作为研究意识神经关联的一种有价值工具的地位。
