Imperial College London
Portrait Picture

ProfessorDarioFarina

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering

Chair in Neurorehabilitation Engineering
 
 
 
//

Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 1387d.farina Website

 
 
//

Location

 

RSM 4.15Royal School of MinesSouth Kensington Campus

//

Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Ibanez:2023:10.1113/JP282983,
author = {Ibanez, Pereda J and Zicher, B and Brown, KE and Rocchi, L and Casolo, A and Del, Vecchio A and Spampinato, DA and Vollette, C-A and Rothwell, JC and Baker, SN and Farina, D},
doi = {10.1113/JP282983},
journal = {The Journal of Physiology},
pages = {3187--3199},
title = {Standard intensities of transcranial alternating current stimulation over the motor cortex do not entrain corticospinal inputs to motor neurons},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1113/JP282983},
volume = {601},
year = {2023}
}
Download

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Transcranial alternating current stimulation (TACS) is commonly used to synchronise a cortical area and its outputs to the stimulus waveform, but evidence for this based on brain recordings in humans is challenging. The corticospinal tract transmits beta oscillations (~21Hz) from motor cortex to tonically contracted limb muscles linearly. Therefore, muscle activity may be used to measure the level of beta entrainment in the corticospinal tract due to TACS over motor cortex. Here, we assessed if TACS is able to modulate the neural inputs to muscles, which would provide indirect evidence for TACS-driven neural entrainment. In the first part of this study, we ran simulations of motor neuron (MN) pools receiving inputs from corticospinal neurons with different levels of beta entrainment. Results suggest that MNs are highly sensitive to changes in corticospinal beta activity. Then, we ran experiments on healthy human subjects (N=10) in which TACS (at 1mA) was delivered over the motor cortex at 21Hz (beta stimulation), or at 7Hz or 40Hz (control conditions) while the abductor digiti minimi or the tibialis anterior muscle were tonically contracted. Muscle activity was measured using high-density electromyography, which allowed us to decompose the activity of pools of motor units innervating the muscles. By analysing motor unit pool activity, we observed that none of the TACS conditions could consistently alter the spectral contents of the common neural inputs received by the muscles. These results suggest that 1mA-TACS over motor cortex given at beta frequencies does not entrain corticospinal activity.
AU  - Ibanez,Pereda J
AU  - Zicher,B
AU  - Brown,KE
AU  - Rocchi,L
AU  - Casolo,A
AU  - Del,Vecchio A
AU  - Spampinato,DA
AU  - Vollette,C-A
AU  - Rothwell,JC
AU  - Baker,SN
AU  - Farina,D
DO  - 10.1113/JP282983
EP  - 3199
PY  - 2023///
SN  - 0022-3751
SP  - 3187
TI  - Standard intensities of transcranial alternating current stimulation over the motor cortex do not entrain corticospinal inputs to motor neurons
T2  - The Journal of Physiology
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1113/JP282983
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/97868
VL  - 601
ER  -
Download