Prof. Hartwig Siebner | Causal brain mapping: How gets the brain a handle on its actions?

To master the challenges of an ever changing environment, the brain needs to select the appropriate actions and carry them out with skill. In this lecture, I will highlight how transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be combined with structural and functional MRI to delineate the neural underpinnings of action selection and dexterity in the human brain. In the first part of my talk, I will show how TMS can be used to trace and manipulate action selection. In the second part, I will introduce shape-based TMS mapping of the primary motor cortex (M1) and show how this method can be used to trace within-area representational plasticity of human M1.