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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Chapter 31 Transcranial magnetic stimulation studies of contralesional space attention deficits

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Publisher Summary The power of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to disrupt and modulate the neural activity in focal brain regions has provided researchers in this field a promising tool to empirically test specific neuropsychological models and constructs of contralesional space attention deficits. A group of studies has used TMS to transiently disrupt the cortical activity of the focal brain areas in normal subjects to replicate the effects of neurological lesions. This chapter discusses a number of studies, using single-pulse, paired-TMS, and repetitive TMS (rTMS) and different experimental paradigms that show how this technique can be of fundamental importance, in elucidating the mechanisms of contralesional space attention deficits— that is, extinction and neglect. The series of studies discussed in this chapter exemplify three of the major potential contributions of TMS to the understanding of cognitive neuroscience: (1) the transient disruption of focal cortical activity to establish the causal role and the timing of the contribution of a given cortical region in a behavior, (2) the application of TMS to the study of functional brain connectivity, and (3) the application of TMS to human patients to examine the compensatory cortical plasticity that occurs in response to a lesion.