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. 2017 May 3;7:1387. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-01428-6

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© The Author(s) 2017

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Course of the study. Participants were not allowed to smoke 10 h before and during the experimental session. In the beginning of each session, 25 baseline single pulse MEPs were recorded at an intensity to elicit MEPs with peak-to-peak amplitudes of on average ~1 mV before administration of varenicline (0.3 or 1 mg) or placebo medication. Three hours later, a second baseline was recorded to explore the effect of medication on cortical excitability, and the stimulation intensity was adjusted, if necessary (third baseline). Next, tDCS (cathodal or anodal) or PAS (PAS10 or PAS25) was administered and blocks of 25 MEPs were recorded at time points of 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes after plasticity induction. Further TMS measurements were conducted in the evening of the same day (SE), morning (at ~9:00 AM, NM), noon (at ~12:00 PM, NN) and evening (at ~6:00 PM, NE) of the second day.