What Effect Does TMS Have on the Brain?

Summary: Researchers report transcranial magnetic stimulation predisposes neural connections in the visual cortex for reorganization.

Source: RUB.

Researchers of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have gained new insights on the question of how transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) effects functional interconnectivity of neurons. For visualisation, they employed fluorescent dyes which provide information on the activity of neurons by light. Using this technique, they showed in an animal model that TMS predisposes neuronal connections in the visual cortex of the brain for processes of reorganisation.

TMS is being used as a treatment for a number of brain diseases such as depression, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia, but there has been little research on how exactly TMS works. The team of associate professor Dr Dirk Jancke of the Optical Imaging Lab in Bochum describes its new discoveries in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America (PNAS).

Examining the effects on cortical maps in the visual cortex

The researchers have investigated how TMS affects the organisation of so-called orientation maps in the visual part of the brain. Those maps are partly genetically determined and partly shaped by the interaction with our surroundings. In the visual cortex, for example, neurones respond to contrast edges of certain orientations, which typically constitute boundaries of objects. Neurons that preferably respond to edges of a specific orientation are closely grouped while clusters of neurons with other orientation preferences are gradually located further away, altogether forming a systematic map across all orientations.

a blue brain
TMS is being used as a treatment for a number of brain diseases such as depression, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia, but there has been little research on how exactly TMS works. NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.

The team employed high frequency TMS and compared the behaviour of neurones to visual stimuli with a specific angular orientation before and after the procedure. The result: After the magnetic stimulation the neurons responded more variable, that is, their preference for a particular orientation was less pronounced than before the TMS. “You could say that after the TMS the neurons were somewhat undecided and hence, potentially open to new tasks”, explains Dirk Jancke. “Therefore, we reasoned that the treatment provides us with a time window for the induction of plastic processes during which neurons can change their functional preference.”

A short visual training remodels the maps

The team then looked into the impact of a passive visual training after TMS treatment. 20-minutes of exposure to images of a specific angular orientation led to enlargement of those areas of the brain representing the trained orientation. “Thus, the map in the visual cortex has incorporated the bias in information content of the preceding visual stimulation by changing its layout within a short time,” says Jancke. “Such a procedure – that is a targeted sensory or motor training after TMS to modify the brain’s connectivity pattern – might be a useful approach to therapeutic interventions as well as for specific forms of sensory-motor training,” explains Dirk Jancke.

Methodological challenges

Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a non-invasive painless procedure: A solenoid is being positioned above the head and the brain area in question can be activated or inhibited by means of magnetic waves. So far little is known about the impact of the procedure on a cellular network level, because the strong magnetic field of the TMS superimposes signals that are used by researchers in order to monitor the neuronal effects of the TMS. The magnetic pulse interferes in particular with electrical measurement techniques, such as EEG. In addition, other procedures used in human participants, e.g. functional magnetic resonance imaging, are too slow or their spatial resolution is too low.

Dirk Jancke’s team used voltage dependent fluorescent dyes, embedded in the membranes of the neurones, in order to measure the brain’s activity after the TMS with high spatiotemporal resolution. As soon as a neurone’s activity is modulated, the dye molecules change emission intensity. Light signals therefore provide information about immediate changes in activity of groups of neurons.

About this neuroscience research article

Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research funded this study.

Source: Dirk Jancke – RUB
Publisher: Organized by NeuroscienceNews.com.
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Open access research for “TMS-induced neuronal plasticity enables targeted remodeling of visual cortical maps” by Vladislav Kozyrev, Robert Staadt, Ulf T. Eysel, and Dirk Jancke in PNAS. Published June 4 2018.
doi:10.1073/pnas.1802798115

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]RUB “What Effect Does TMS Have on the Brain?.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 5 June 2018.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/tms-brain-effect-9257/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]RUB (2018, June 5). What Effect Does TMS Have on the Brain?. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved June 5, 2018 from https://neurosciencenews.com/tms-brain-effect-9257/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]RUB “What Effect Does TMS Have on the Brain?.” https://neurosciencenews.com/tms-brain-effect-9257/ (accessed June 5, 2018).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]


Abstract

TMS-induced neuronal plasticity enables targeted remodeling of visual cortical maps

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has become a popular clinical method to modify cortical processing. The events underlying TMS-induced functional changes remain, however, largely unknown because current noninvasive recording methods lack spatiotemporal resolution or are incompatible with the strong TMS-associated electrical field. In particular, an answer to the question of how the relatively unspecific nature of TMS stimulation leads to specific neuronal reorganization, as well as a detailed picture of TMS-triggered reorganization of functional brain modules, is missing. Here we used real-time optical imaging in an animal experimental setting to track, at submillimeter range, TMS-induced functional changes in visual feature maps over several square millimeters of the brain’s surface. We show that high-frequency TMS creates a transient cortical state with increased excitability and increased response variability, which opens a time window for enhanced plasticity. Visual stimulation (i.e., 30 min of passive exposure) with a single orientation applied during this TMS-induced permissive period led to enlarged imprinting of the chosen orientation on the visual map across visual cortex. This reorganization was stable for hours and was characterized by a systematic shift in orientation preference toward the trained orientation. Thus, TMS can noninvasively trigger a targeted large-scale remodeling of fundamentally mature functional architecture in early sensory cortex.

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