Background & Aims
Homeostatic plasticity (HMP) regulates synaptic plasticity to maintain an optimal level of neuronal activity by preventing excessive neuronal excitability or silencing. Aberrant HMP is thought to play a role in chronic pain, hence a reliable approach to induce HMP is needed. Recently, it has been demonstrated that transcranial magnetic theta burst stimulation (TBS), can be used to induce HMP in the human cortex, by implementing a priming-test TBS paradigm. However, the reliability of TBS induced HMP has yet to be investigated.
Our aim was to test the reliability of inducing HMP in the human primary motor cortex (M1) across days using TBS.
Methods
We investigated the test-retest reliability of TBS induced HMP in the M1 in 20 healthy individuals, across days 0, 2, and 7. Using a cross-over design, HMP was investigated in response to both an excitatory and an inhibitory priming-test paradigm. To assess HMP, 20 MEPs were recorded from the first dorsal interossei (FDI) muscle at baseline, between the priming and test blocks, and at 0-, 10-, and 20-minutes post-stimulation.
Results
MEPs were reliable across days for both protocols (all ICCs > 0.7). Although HMP was not induced as expected for either paradigm (F(8) = 1.04, p = 0.408), the homeostatic response could be dependent on initial exposure to either the inhibitory or excitatory paradigm. Specifically, when accounting for order effects, HMP was evident (F(9)=3.85, p < 0.001), but contingent on the first implemented protocol (t = -5.098, p < 0.001).
Conclusions
Our findings provide important insights for how HMP induction protocols are designed, and this novel discovery of order effects warrants further investigation into the reliability of these methods. These findings are a step towards reliable HMP induction, and therefore pave the way to studying the neural underpinnings of chronic pain.
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Presenting Author
Emma Tassinari
Poster Authors
Topics
- Novel Experimental/Analytic Approaches/Tools