Test-retest reliability of primary motor cortex mapping: Neuronavigated transcranial magnetic brain stimulation versus functional MRI

Introduction: In the past, presurgical functional brain mapping was mainly restricted to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). FMRI motor mappings previously showed rather low test-retest reliability,1 especially for the face and tongue area.2 Recently, neuronavigated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (nTMS) has been established as an alternative in clinical routine.3,4 We here compared the reliability of both motor mapping approaches. Fig. 1: ‘Heat map’ of the left cortical primary motor area (negative: gray; positive: red [MEP amplitude >50uV] / yellow [MEP amplitude >200uV] after mapping by navigated…