Magnetic stimulation can activate the human central and peripheral nervous systems non-invasively and virtually painlessly. Magnetic stimulation over the spinal enlargements can activate spinal nerves at the neuroforamina (magnetic-neuroforamina stimulation). This stimulation method provides us with information related to the latency of compound-muscle action potential (CMAP), which is usually ...

BACKGROUND There is supportive evidence that multiple sclerosis (MS) could potentially affect the peripheral nervous system. We assessed peripheral sensory and motor nerve involvement in patients with MS by a nerve conduction velocity test. METHODS We studied 75 patients who had a relapsing-remitting or secondary progressive pattern. We measured amplitude, latency, conduction velocity, Hoffma...

Amplitudes of motor evoked potentials (MEPs) are usually much smaller than those of motor responses to maximal peripheral nerve stimulation, and show marked variation between normal subjects and from one stimulus to another. Consequently, amplitude measurements have low sensitivity to detect central motor conduction failures due to the broad range of normal values. Since these characteristics a...

Central conduction was studied in 12 patients with X-linked recessive bulbospinal neuronopathy (XBSN) using percutaneous electrical cortical, cervical and lumbar stimulation and somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs). The central motor conduction time from the motor cortex to the cervical and lumbar segments of the spinal cord was normal in XBSN. SEPs, however, were abnormal or central sensory ...

Transcranial stimulation has become an established method in the evaluation of corticospinal tract function. Clinical studies mainly address slowing of conduction through measurement of increased central conduction time (CCT) and 'failures' of conduction through observation of marked reductions in the size of the motor evoked potential (MEP). While CCT is of great interest in detecting subclini...

Hereditary Canine Spinal Muscular Atrophy (HCSMA) is an autosomal dominant disorder of motor neurons that shares features with human motor neuron disease. In animals exhibiting the accelerated phenotype (homozygotes), we demonstrated previously that many motor units exhibit functional deficits that likely reflect underlying deficits in neurotrans-mission. The drug 4-aminopyridine (4AP) blocks v...

Electromyographic recordings were carried out on 36 patients with neuropathies and neuromuscular disorders with a selectivity permitting identification of single motor unit potentials during maximal voluntary effort and after supramaximal nerve stimulation. The axonal conduction velocity and refractory period of 117 motor units were determined and the findings were compared to those in previous...