Brain Stimulation Core Capabilities

Stroke rehab study participant recieves transcranial magnetic brain stimulation from research therapist

The Brain Stimulation (BSTIM) Core builds on a series of brain stimulation laboratories currently distributed across the MUSC campus. This extensive brain stimulation resource provides opportunities through training, quality control and collaborative grant-seeking, and ultimately incubates and facilitates world-class research. Organizing diagnostic and therapeutic functions within a common core provides much needed synergy. The BSTIM Core enables the development of patient-specific rehabilitation, leading to improved outcomes for those with disability after stroke.

Brain stimulation is a field of unusual promise, offering new tools for brain discovery and a new class of therapeutics likely distinct from those intrinsic to pharmacological interventions. Yet, it is also a field whose clinical applications are spread across neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry and rehabilitation, and whose basic research approaches have yet to integrate into an identified specialty (akin to the field of pharmacology in the last century). The BSTIM Core serves as a local, statewide, national and international focal point for integrating and developing this new science, with a specific focus on how to use this knowledge to enhance post-stroke recovery.

Core Resources

  • Animal BSTIM
  • Bihemi paired pulse
  • Brainsight
  • Neurophysiological tools
  • PAS system
  • rTMS
  • tDCS

Core Services

  1. Basic TMS-measured neurophysiology (Motor Threshold, Cortical Silent Period, Paired Pulse, and Recruitment Curves).
  2. Image-guided stimulation.
  3. More specialized approaches such as bi-hemispheric paired pulse for transcallosal measurements and paired-associative stimulation for measures of hemispheric plasticity.
  4. Invasive and noninvasive brain stimulation in animal models.

If you're interested in the capabilities of the Brain Stimulation Core for stroke recovery research, you may also be interested in learning more about its capabilities can be applied to to the study of rehabilitation at the National Center of Neuromodulation for Rehabilitation website.