Phase-Amplitude Coupling of Neural Oscillations Can Be Effectively Probed with Concurrent TMS-EEG

Figure 5

Global comparisons of phase-amplitude coupling between sTMS and rTMS. Plots show the spatial extent of motor-TMS-induced (left column) and visual-TMS-induced (right column) theta-gamma (first row), alpha-gamma (second row), and beta-gamma (third row) event-related phase-amplitude coupling (ERPAC) during the sTMS pulse in green and the five rTMS pulses in blue, with the rTMS frequency always corresponding to the frequency of the phase series. We extracted TMS effects by averaging ERPAC at all electrodes over predefined time windows of interest around the respective pulses and over the sixteen amplitude frequencies, comparing the resulting values between motor or visual TMS and sham stimulation with one-tailed paired-sample Student’s -tests, and counting the number of electrodes with a statistically significant difference (; drawn on -axis). The spatial extent of TMS effects was subsequently compared between the sTMS pulse and each of the five rTMS pulses with exact binomial tests. Corresponding -values, adjusted for multiple comparisons with the false discovery rate (FDR) procedure, are superimposed onto the rTMS bars in all plots; significant -values () are displayed in white, while all other -values are displayed in yellow.