Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): Development of an alternative placebo system

Author

Gonzalez-Trejo, E. ; Strauss, D.J. ; Schwerdtfeger, K.

Author_Institution

Comput. Diagnostics & Biocybernetics Unit at the Neurocenter, Saarland Univ. of Appl. Sci., Homburg, Germany

fYear

2011

fDate

April 27 2011-May 1 2011

Firstpage

580

Lastpage

583

Abstract

A placebo (sham) stimulation system for transcranial magnetic stimulation was developed and tested. To achieve the placebo stimulation, the existent systems were studied and the goal was to develop an alternative system which considered every non-magnetically induced feature of the real stimulation, masking them by means of electrical and auditory stimulation, as well as a reduced magnetic field output to prevent cortical stimulation. As a result, placebo stimulation offered convincing sensation masking in most of the test subjects, providing an alternative way to perform control experiments.

Keywords

bioelectric phenomena; biomedical measurement; electric field effects; hearing; transcranial magnetic stimulation; TMS; alternative placebo system; auditory stimulation; cortical stimulation prevention; electrical stimulation; nonmagnetically induced features; placebo stimulation system; reduced magnetic field output; sensation masking; sham stimulation system; transcranial magnetic stimulation; Coils; Electrical stimulation; Electrodes; Headphones; Magnetic stimulation; Nervous system; Scalp;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Neural Engineering (NER), 2011 5th International IEEE/EMBS Conference on

Conference_Location

Cancun

ISSN

1948-3546

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4140-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NER.2011.5910615

Filename

5910615