Figure 3.

Assessment of motor cortex excitability. (A) Shows the ipsilateral silent period (iSP) from TMS suprathreshold stimulation of M1 (120% of resting motor threshold, rMT) of either hemisphere at three time points: 40 days after the right thalamic stroke (T0), immediately after the last rTMS treatment on the primary motor area of the affected hemisphere (T1), and one month after the last rTMS (T2). Surface EMG from the first dorsal interosseous during maximal thumb adduction, rectified, filtered, and averaged across eight stimuli. Dotted lines indicate the mean amplitude of EMG activity in the 10 ms preceding the TMS stimulus. The iSP area is marked with an asterisk (*). See Supplementary Material for further details. (B) Shows the short interval intracortical inhibition (SICI) and the intracortical facilitation (ICF) at T0 (left column of tracings) and T2 (right column) of the affected hemisphere. From top to bottom: eight superimposed traces of EMG signals were recorded after a single-pulse TMS delivered at 120% of the resting motor threshold (rMT) (line 1: unconditioned), and after paired-pulse TMS (ppTMS; lines 2–5). For ppTMS, the conditioning stimulus was given at 75% of rMT 3 ms (line 2), 5 ms (line 3), 15 ms (line 4), and 20 ms (line 5) before the conditioned stimulus, delivered at 120% of the rMT.