Chapter 37 TMS in stroke

Publisher Summary Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in stroke is useful for several reasons, such as TMS in the early stage after stroke provides important prognostic informations, TMS helps to quantify the severity of central motor pathway lesions, and TMS serves to describe motor excitability changes associated with spontaneous or therapy-induced improvement of motor functions. This chapter discusses different indications for TMS after stroke and the information that can be obtained by the use of various TMS techniques. Various TMS techniques have demonstrated perilesional excitability changes. They further support the hypothesis that a single monohemispheric lesion may affect a widespread bihemispherically-organized network. TMS methods have also shown that the adult brain is capable of reorganization, and appropriately- timed TMS pulses can help to clarify the functional relevance of brain areas activated in positron emission tomography (PET) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies.