Magnetic stimulation studies of visual cognition

The panoply of non-invasive techniques for brain imaging is responsible for much of the current excitement in cognitive neuroscience; sensory, perceptual and cognitive behaviour can now be correlated with cerebral blood flow as assessed by functional imaging, the electrical fields generated by populations of neurons or changes in magnetic fields created by electrical activity. Correlations between localized brain activity and behaviour, however, do not of themselves establish that any brain area is necessary for a particular task; necessity is the domain of the lesion technique. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a technique that can be used non-invasively to produce reversible functional disruption and has already been used to investigate visual detection, discrimination, attention and plasticity. The power of TMS as a `lesion' technique lies in the opportunity to combine reversible disruption with high degrees of spatial and temporal resolution. In this review we trace some of the major developments in the use of TMS as a technique for the investigation of visual cognition.