Congratulations to Our Colleagues on Another Significant Publication in Scientific Reports

State-Dependent Effects of Transcranial Oscillatory Currents on the Motor System during Action Observation

We applied transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to the primary motor cortex (M1) at different frequencies during an index–thumb pinch-grip observation task. To estimate changes in the corticospinal output, we used the size of motor evoked potentials (MEPs) obtained by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of M1 using an online MRI-guided simultaneous TMS-tACS approach. The results of the beta-tACS confirm a non-selective increase in corticospinal excitability in subjects at rest; an increase was observed for both of the tested hand muscles, the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and the abductor digiti minimi (ADM). However, during action observation of the pinch-grip movement, the increase of corticospinal excitability was only observed for the prime mover FDI muscle and took place during alpha-tACS, while gamma-tACS affected both the FDI and control muscle (ADM) responses. These phenomena likely reflect the hypothesis that the mu and gamma rhythms specifically index the downstream modulation of primary sensorimotor areas by engaging mirror neuron activity. The current neuromodulation approach confirms that tACS can be used to induce neurophysiologically detectable state-dependent enhancement effects, even in complex motor-cognitive tasks.

Supplementary information accompanies this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49166-1

Matteo Feurra

Институт когнитивных нейронаук: Доцент

Evgeny Blagoveshchensky

Центр нейроэкономики и когнитивных исследований: Старший научный сотрудник

Vadim Nikulin

Центр нейроэкономики и когнитивных исследований: Ведущий научный сотрудник

Maria Nazarova

Центр нейроэкономики и когнитивных исследований: Научный сотрудник

Daria Pozdeeva

Maria Yurevich

Simone Rossi 

Department of Medicine, Surgery and Neuroscience, Siena Brain Investigation & Neuromodulation Lab (Si-BIN Lab.), Unit of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology and Section of Human Physiology, University of Siena, Siena, 53100, Italy

Anna Labedeva

Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University College London