Petrichella Sara, Johnson Nessa, He Bin
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America.
Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering, University Campus Bio-Medico, Rome, Italy.
PLoS One. 2017 Apr 6;12(4):e0174879. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174879. eCollection 2017.
Combined transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG) can be used to analyze cortical reactivity and connectivity. However, the effects of corticospinal and peripheral muscle activity on TMS-evoked potentials (TEPs) are not well understood. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the relationship between cortico-spinal activity, in the form of peripheral motor-evoked potentials (MEPs), and the TEPs from motor areas, along with the connectivity among activated brain areas. TMS was applied to left and right motor cortex (M1), separately, at motor threshold while multi-channel EEG responses were recorded in 17 healthy human subjects. Cortical excitability and source imaging analysis were performed for all trials at each stimulation location, as well as comparing trials resulting in MEPs to those without. Connectivity analysis was also performed comparing trials resulting in MEPs to those without. Cortical excitability results significantly differed between the MEP and no-MEP conditions for left M1 TMS at 60 ms (CP1, CP3, C1) and for right M1 TMS at 54 ms (CP6, C6). Connectivity analysis revealed higher outflow and inflow between M1 and somatosensory cortex bi-directionally for trials with MEPs than those without for both left M1 TMS (at 60, 100, 164 ms) and right M1 TMS (at 54, 100, and 164 ms). Both TEP amplitudes and connectivity measures related to motor and somatosensory areas ipsilateral to the stimulation were shown to correspond with peripheral MEP amplitudes. This suggests that cortico-spinal activation, along with the resulting somatosensory feedback, affects the cortical activity and dynamics within motor areas reflected in the TEPs. The findings suggest that TMS-EEG, along with adaptive connectivity estimators, can be used to evaluate the cortical dynamics associated with sensorimotor integration and proprioceptive manipulation along with the influence of peripheral muscle feedback.
经颅磁刺激(TMS)与脑电图(EEG)相结合可用于分析皮质反应性和连接性。然而,皮质脊髓和外周肌肉活动对TMS诱发电位(TEP)的影响尚未得到充分理解。本文旨在评估以周围运动诱发电位(MEP)形式存在的皮质脊髓活动与运动区TEP之间的关系,以及激活脑区之间的连接性。在运动阈值下,分别对17名健康人类受试者的左、右运动皮层(M1)施加TMS,同时记录多通道EEG反应。对每个刺激部位的所有试验进行皮质兴奋性和源成像分析,并将产生MEP的试验与未产生MEP的试验进行比较。还进行了连接性分析,比较产生MEP的试验与未产生MEP的试验。对于左M1 TMS在60毫秒时(CP1、CP3、C1)以及右M1 TMS在54毫秒时(CP6、C6),MEP和无MEP条件下的皮质兴奋性结果存在显著差异。连接性分析显示,对于左M1 TMS(在60、100、164毫秒)和右M1 TMS(在54、100和164毫秒),产生MEP的试验中M1与体感皮层之间的双向流出和流入高于未产生MEP的试验。与刺激同侧的运动和体感区相关的TEP振幅和连接性测量均显示与外周MEP振幅相对应。这表明皮质脊髓激活以及由此产生的体感反馈会影响TEP中反映的运动区内的皮质活动和动态。研究结果表明,TMS-EEG以及自适应连接性估计器可用于评估与感觉运动整合和本体感觉操作相关的皮质动态以及外周肌肉反馈的影响。