Study of MEP response of transcranial magnetic stimulation in multiple muscles on healthy subjects

Abstract

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a device that is used to stimulate the brain for diagnostic or therapeutic purpose. It is usually used in post stroke treatment, depression treatment and pain control. Myriad research was done on the Muscle Evoked Potential (MEP) of the muscles when the TMS had been applied to the motor cortex of the brain. Most studies that involve single muscle are only either on the hand or leg. There are also studies involve multiple muscles for different goals and different targeted muscles. This study will focus on obtaining the optimum motor threshold that are out from the TMS to the motor cortex in order to obtain the MEP amplitude of the targeted muscles. The signals of the EMG of the APB, FCR and ADM were recorded using Bioradio analysed in Matlab by filter algorithm consists of High Pass filter and Notch filter. From the project, the MEP of the selected muscle were obtained with APB muscles with 0.12 mV, FCR is 0.11 mV and for muscle of ADM is 0.12 mV. The APB and ADM that have high MEP shows that it is easily stimulated by the TMS compare to FCR. The Motor Threshold that was obtained through this project is enough to make the targeted muscles responses of 64% from the full power of the TMS. This Motor Threshold can be used as the benchmark for other research on the minimum level of power needed by TMS. This minimum level power given to the subject is needed to study the reponse of three muscles involved.