Separation of contamination caused by coil clicks from responses elicited by transcranial magnetic stimulation

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is accompanied with loud clicks that evoke auditory responses in the brain, confounding several types of TMS studies. We investigated the effects of these clicks with high-resolution EEG by applying TMS pulses at 3 magnitudes, with the coil placed either at 10 or 50 mm over the subjects’ vertex and recording event-related potentials (ERPs). The clicks were found to elicit a positively displaced response at 150–250 ms post-TMS. Furthermore, clicks were found to interact with simultaneously presented auditory sinewave stimuli, resulting in an amplitude decrease in the auditory N1 response.