Subthreshold transcranial magnetic stimulation applied during the reaction time interval decreases reaction time under control but not startle conditions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Presenting a startling acoustic stimulus (SAS) during a simple reaction time (RT) task significantly decreases RT; however, the neural mechanism behind this early response triggering is not fully understood. One hypothesis is that a SAS leads to an involuntary increase in initiation-related activation processes via a sub-cortically mediated pathway, triggering a cortically stored response without engaging the usual cortical processing. Subthreshold transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) applied over motor cortex has been shown to increase cortical excitability in the time period 6-30ms after the pulse (termed intracortical facilitation [ICF]). ICF protocols have also been shown to reduce simple RT. The purpose of this experiment was to examine whether subthreshold TMS applied to motor cortex early in the RT interval following a SAS would result in a further decrease in RT, providing evidence the cortex is involved in SAS-triggered responses. Participants completed a simple RT task where a SAS was occasionally presented concurrent with the go-signal. On selected trials TMS (or sham TMS) was applied in the first 30 ms following the go-signal during control and SAS trials. Results from control trials revealed that TMS led to a significant decrease in RT (~30 ms), with sham TMS showing a decrease of smaller magnitude (~15 ms). Furthermore, RT on SAS trials was significantly faster than on control trials; however, no additional decrease in RT was observed following real or sham TMS. These results suggest that either cortical involvement is limited/bypassed during SAS trials or that startle leads to a ceiling effect on RT facilitation. 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) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 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 | 0.001 |
| 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".