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

Figure 3

Local comparisons of phase-amplitude coupling between sTMS and rTMS. Plots show the strength 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 last rTMS pulse in blue, with the rTMS frequency always corresponding to the frequency of the phase series. We extracted TMS effects by averaging ERPAC over electrodes C1 and C3 for motor TMS and electrodes Oz and O2 for visual TMS, subtracting corresponding mean data obtained during sham stimulation, and averaging the resulting values over predefined time windows of interest around the respective pulses and over the sixteen amplitude frequencies. Bars of sTMS and rTMS represent mean over the fourteen assessed participants; each displayed -value is based on a two-tailed paired-sample Student’s -test between the stimulation paradigms.