P 207. Reliability of an automated protocol versus manual interpreters in analysing cortical silent period

Introduction: Cortical silent period (cSP) is measured after shortly interrupting active muscle contraction with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) (Fuhr, 1991). The cSP is a measure of cortical inhibition and representing interneuron inhibitory effect at excited motor cortical areas. Several pathological conditions and pharmacological manipulations induce changes to cSP duration. In addition, cSP has exhibited prognostic value e.g., during stroke recovery (Curra, 2002). It has been suggested that input–output characteristics of cSP be determined for thorough assessment of inhibitory interneurons (Werhahn, 2007; Kimiskidis, 2005). These characteristics are commonly analyzed manually from measured electromyography (EMG) signal. However, to avoid inter-interpreter effects in cSP interpretation and detection, as well as to allow quick measurement in real-time, an automatic analysis routine would be preferable.Methods: We reanalyzed previously manually analyzed cSPs (Säisänen, 2008) of the right hand of 55 healthy subjects (27 male, 28 female, age range: 23–80) using a novel automatic routine. Five cSPs were induced at 120% of the resting motor threshold (rMT) focused on the left M1. Furthermore, we recruited one female (age 28) subject for whom the cSPs were induced with several stimulation intensities (SIs), and those cSPs were analyzed manually by two of the authors as well as using the automatic routine. In the automatic routine, we computed the first time-derivati...
Source: Clinical Neurophysiology - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Society Proceedings Source Type: research