title: Transcranial magnetic stimulation in study of the visual pathway.
abstract: The authors critically reviewed experiments in which transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and repetitive TMS (rTMS) of the higher visual pathway were used. Topics include basic mechanisms of neural excitation by TMS and their relevance to the visual pathway (excitatory and inhibitory effects), TMS and rTMS of calcarine cortex (suppression, unmasking, and phosphenes), TMS of V5 (suppression), TMS and rTMS of higher level temporoparietooccipital areas (perceptual errors, unmasking, and inattention), the role of frontal lobe output in visual perception, and vocalization of perceived visual stimuli (role of consciousness of linguistic symbols).
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn, 11203, USA.
authors.forename: V E
authors.initials: VE
authors.lastname: Amassian
authors.forename: R Q
authors.initials: RQ
authors.lastname: Cracco
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Maccabee
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Cracco
authors.forename: A P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Rudell
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Eberle
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D019706:Excitatory Postsynaptic Potentials; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009431:Neural Conduction / Q000502:physiology; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010469:Perceptual Distortion / Q000502:physiology; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D010719:Phosphenes / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D011601:Psychophysics; D011932:Reading; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology*