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Published on: January 23, 2017
Development and positioning reliability of a TMS coil holder for headache research
Edward P Chronicle1, A Jane Pearson, Cheryl Matthews
1Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii, USA.
Objective:
Accurate and reproducible coil positioning is important for headache research using transcranial magnetic stimulation protocols. We aimed to design a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil holder and demonstrate reliability of test-retest coil positioning.
Methods:
A coil holder was developed and manufactured according to three principles of stability, durability, and three-dimensional positional accuracy. Reliability of coil positioning was assessed by stimulating over the motor cortex of four neurologically normal subjects and recording finger muscle responses, both at a test phase and a retest phase several hours later.
Results:
In all four subjects, repositioning of the transcranial magnetic stimulation coil solely on the basis of coil holder coordinates was accurate to within 2 mm.
Conclusions:
The coil holder demonstrated good test-retest reliability of coil positioning, and is thus a promising tool for transcranial magnetic stimulation-based headache research, particularly studies of prophylactic drug effect where several laboratory visits with identical coil positioning are necessary.
