Fig. 1.

Establishment of animal model of cerebral ischemia and rTMS application. A MCAO/r model was established under cerebral blood flow monitored by laser speckle flowmetry. B Ischemic cerebral blood flow dropped below 30% of the contralateral side during surgery (n = 6). C During the stimulation, mice were un-anesthetized, gently grasped in rubber glove. The magnetic field covers most of the cortical area of the infarcted hemisphere. D Motor evoked potentials of the lower limb gastrocnemius muscle in mice. E Mice received a standard theta-burst stimulation paradigm as closely as possible to the protocol used in human studies (ten 50 Hz bursts with 3 pulses each repeated 20 times at 5 Hz intervals). F Experimental design of the study. Mice were subjected to MCAO/r after baseline assessments. Then, animals were randomly subdivided into Sham, MCAO/r, and iTBS groups. Following 7 continuous days of transcranial magnetic stimulation session (iTBS group) or sham stimulation (Sham and MCAO/r groups), all groups underwent post-intervention assessments. EdU was intraperitoneally administered for detecting cell proliferation every 2 days during experiments, initiated 24 h after MCAO/r surgery