rTMS elicits tactile discrimination improvement and parallel plastic reorganization in human SI

rTMS is widely used to investigate different aspects of cortical excitability and inhibition, which play an important role in controlling plasticity. These experiments imply that cortical processing can be altered by repetitive current pulses, but little is known about perceptual consequences of high-frequency (5Hz) rTMS in human subjects. Here we demonstrate, using psychophysical testing and parallel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), that subliminal rTMS applied with a figure-eight coil positioned over the digit representation of left somatosensory cortex (SI) evokes plastic changes on the stimulate…