TMS is a method to stimulate the brain using strong and rapidly-changing magnetic fields. When used according to international safety guidelines (Rossi et al., 2021), it is safe.
Some human participants may experience side-effects of TMS, due both to the stimulation itself, but also to the anxiety or stress that some participants experience before or during stimulation.
We have tried several times to publish reports of these adverse events, but the policies or procedures of academic journals have, in our experience, prevented these reports coming to light.
This page serves as a database of reports of adverse events that occurred in the context of TMS experiments on healthy human volunteers. We have also documented ratings of annoyance during TMS.
We welcome any and all relevant contributions from researchers using TMS. Share this project using the hashtag #AllAdverseEvents
| Authors | Year | Title | DOI | Number of cases | Number studied |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reader et al. | 2021 | An instance of presyncope during magnetic stimulation of the median nerve, and instances of presyncope and syncope during evaluation of resting motor threshold with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) | osf.io | 3 | 250 |
| Reader et al. | 2021 | An instance of presyncope during magnetic stimulation of the median nerve, and instances of presyncope and syncope during evaluation of resting motor threshold with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) | osf.io | 3 | 250 |