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Continuous theta-burst stimulation modulates resting-state EEG microstates in healthy subjects

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Abstract

Continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) induces long-lasting inhibitory effects on cortical excitability. Although cTBS has been reported to modulate neural oscillations and functional connectivity, it is still unclear how cTBS affects brain dynamics that could be captured by the resting-sate EEG microstate sequences. This study aims to investigate how cTBS over the left motor cortex affects brain dynamics. We applied 40 s-long cTBS over the left motor cortex of 28 healthy participants. Before and in multi-sessions up to 90 min after cTBS, their performance in a Nine-Hole Peg Test (NHPT), that measures the hand dexterity, and resting state EEG were recorded. Resting-sate EEG data were clustered into four microstates (namely A, B, C, and D) using k-means clustering algorithms. cTBS-induced changes in NHPT performance, microstate dynamics and functional connectivity networks were comprehensively assessed. As compared with baseline, the completion time of NHPT became shorter immediately after cTBS, suggesting cTBS-induced motor function improvement. After cTBS, the topography of microstate B revealed a greater change compared with other three topographies. Importantly, cTBS-induced decrease in completion time of NHPT correlated with cTBS-induced decrease of the mean occurrence of microstate B. Functional connectivity analysis further revealed that cTBS led to an increase of the node efficiency at C4 electrode in microstate B. These results indicated the specific modulation of cTBS over the motor cortex on the dynamics of microstate B. This work provided the evidence of the association between B and motor function, and it also implies the modulation of cTBS over the motor network.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers: 81701785, 62006014, 62020106015, 61976209, 61906188); the Strategic Priority Research Program of CAS (XDB32040200); the CAS International Collaboration Key Project (173211KYSB20190024); and the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation (4214078). The authors would like to thank the subjects for participating in these experiments.

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Author notes

  1. Shuang Qiu and Shengpei Wang have contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shuang Qiu, Shengpei Wang, Chuncheng Zhang & Huiguang He

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shuang Qiu & Huiguang He

  3. School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

    Weiwei Peng

  4. Beijing Machine and Equipment Institute, Beijing, China

    Weibo Yi

  5. Rehabilitation department, Beijing Tiantan hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China

    Jing Zhang

  6. Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Huiguang He

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  1. Shuang Qiu
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [SQ], [SW], [WP], [WY], [CZ], and [JZ]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [SQ] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shuang Qiu or Huiguang He.

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Qiu, S., Wang, S., Peng, W. et al. Continuous theta-burst stimulation modulates resting-state EEG microstates in healthy subjects. Cogn Neurodyn 16, 621–631 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-021-09726-6

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