Sub-threshold transcranial magnetic stimulation does not facilitate reaction time for complex movements beyond speeded sensory effects
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Presentation of a startling acoustic stimulus (SAS) during a simple reaction time (RT) task significantly reduces RT, thought to be due to a SAS involuntarily triggering the release of a cortically stored motor program. In a previous study we applied sub-threshold transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which increases excitability of motor cortex, in the RT interval following a SAS. TMS significantly reduced control RT, but had no effect on startle RT, suggesting that cortex has limited involvement in startle-triggered movements; however, it is also possible the simple wrist movement used led to a floor effect of startle RT. In the present experiment a more complex movement was used to investigate cortical involvement in startle-facilitated RTs, as increased complexity results in longer control and startle RTs, providing a greater available range for RT facilitation by sub-threshold TMS in the startle condition. Participants completed a simple RT task requiring a three-key press movement in response to an auditory go-signal, which was randomly replaced by a SAS on 25% of trials. On a subset of trials real or sham TMS was applied over motor cortex 30ms following the go-signal or 15ms following the SAS. Results showed that following the control go-signal, both sham and real TMS significantly reduced RT; however, there was no difference between the conditions or between any of the SAS conditions. These results suggest that complex movements are not susceptible to RT facilitation by sub-threshold TMS in the same manner as simpler movements, despite showing similar facilitation in response to a SAS.Acknowledgments: Supported by NSERC and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".