Schapira Giuditta, Chang Justin, Kim Yeun, Ngo Jacqueline P, Deblieck Choi, Bianco Valentina, Edwards Dylan J, Dobkin Bruce H, Wu Allan D, Iacoboni Marco
Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Antwerp Management School, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium.
NeuroSci. 2022 Oct 25;3(4):589-603. doi: 10.3390/neurosci3040042. eCollection 2022 Dec.
Paired associative stimulation (PAS) is a widely used noninvasive brain stimulation protocol to assess neural plasticity. Its reproducibility, however, has been rarely tested and with mixed results. With two consecutive studies, we aimed to provide further tests and a more systematic assessment of PAS reproducibility. We measured intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs)-a widely used tool to assess whether groups of measurements resemble each other-in two PAS studies on healthy volunteers. The first study included five PAS sessions recording 10 MEPS every 10 min for an hour post-PAS. The second study included two PAS sessions recording 50 MEPS at 20 and 50 min post-PAS, based on analyses from the first study. In both studies PAS sessions were spaced one week apart. Within sessions ICC was fair to excellent for both studies, yet between sessions ICC was poor for both studies. We suggest that long term meta-plasticity effects (longer than one week) may interfere with between sessions reproducibility.
配对联想刺激（PAS）是一种广泛用于评估神经可塑性的非侵入性脑刺激方案。然而，其可重复性很少得到测试，结果也参差不齐。通过两项连续的研究，我们旨在对PAS的可重复性进行进一步测试和更系统的评估。我们在两项针对健康志愿者的PAS研究中测量了组内相关系数（ICC）——一种广泛用于评估测量组是否彼此相似的工具。第一项研究包括五个PAS疗程，在PAS后一小时内每10分钟记录10次运动诱发电位（MEP）。根据第一项研究的分析，第二项研究包括两个PAS疗程，在PAS后20分钟和50分钟记录50次MEP。在两项研究中，PAS疗程间隔一周。在每个疗程内，两项研究的ICC均为中等至优秀，但在不同疗程之间，两项研究的ICC均较差。我们认为，长期的元可塑性效应（超过一周）可能会干扰不同疗程之间的可重复性。
