RevieweNeuro
TMS Does Not Increase BOLD Activity at the Site of Stimulation: A Review of All Concurrent TMS-fMRI Studies.
Review in eNeuro. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) Treatment Reduces Variability in Brain Function in Schizophrenia: Data From a Double-Blind, Randomized, Sham-Controlled Trial.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2025Trial
- TMS-induced modulation of brain networks and its associations to rTMS treatment for depression: a concurrent fMRI-EEG-TMS study.Brain stimulationTrial
- Mechanisms of transcranial magnetic brain stimulation.Physiological reviews · 2026Review
- Context-dependent abstraction of temporal relationships during naturalistic episodic memory.iScience · 2026Article
- A personalized map of where, when, and how to stimulate the brain to elicit controlled responses.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Mapping shared and specific cortical after-effects of repetitive TMS on brain function.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Consensus guidelines for the use of concurrent TMS-fMRI in cognitive and clinical neuroscience.Nature protocols · 2026Review
- Causal disconnectomics of motion perception networks: insights from transcranial magnetic stimulation-induced BOLD responses.The Journal of physiology · 2026Article
- The effects of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) on resting-state brain entropy (BEN).Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2025Article
- TMS-induced modulation of brain networks and its associations to rTMS treatment for depression: a concurrent fMRI-EEG-TMS study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Lateral prefrontal theta oscillations causally drive a computational mechanism underlying conflict expectation and adaptation.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Chronometric TMS-fMRI of personalized left dorsolateral prefrontal target reveals state-dependency of subgenual anterior cingulate cortex effects.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Article
- Effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation on the human brain recorded with intracranial electrocorticography.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Article
- Unraveling neural complexity: Exploring brain entropy to yield mechanistic insight in neuromodulation therapies for tobacco use disorder.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- Modulation of High-Frequency rTMS on Reward Circuitry in Individuals with Nicotine Dependence: A Preliminary fMRI Study.Neural plasticity · 2024Article
- A guide for concurrent TMS-fMRI to investigate functional brain networks.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Unraveling the brain mechanisms of source monitoring with non-invasive brain stimulation: A systematic review.International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHPArticle
- Network-level dynamics underlying a combined rTMS and psychotherapy treatment for major depressive disorder: An exploratory network analysis.International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHPArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is widely used for understanding brain function in neurologically intact subjects and for the treatment of various disorders. However, the precise neurophysiological effects of TMS at the site of stimulation remain poorly understood. The local effects of TMS can be studied using concurrent TMS-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technique where TMS is delivered during fMRI scanning. However, although concurrent TMS-fMRI was developed over 20 years ago and dozens of studies have used this technique, there is still no consensus on whether TMS increases blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) activity at the site of stimulation. To address this question, here we review all previous concurrent TMS-fMRI studies that reported analyses of BOLD activity at the target location. We find evidence that TMS increases local BOLD activity when stimulating the primary motor (M1) and visual (V1) cortices but that these effects are likely driven by the downstream consequences of TMS (finger twitches and phosphenes). However, TMS does not appear to increase BOLD activity at the site of stimulation for areas outside of the M1 and V1 when conducted at rest. We examine the possible reasons for such lack of BOLD signal increase based on recent work in nonhuman animals. We argue that the current evidence points to TMS inducing periods of increased and decreased neuronal firing that mostly cancel each other out and therefore lead to no change in the overall BOLD signal.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.