Information
General
The Utrecht TMS course is intended for clinicians and researchers who want to use navigated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in their practices or laboratories. The first day of the course is dedicated to clinical use of TMS. The morning of day 2 is dedicated to research users and insights from TMS research. In the afternoon of day 2, we will focus on applications of tDCS. Of course, this division is never black and white: clinical users are often interested in the emerging applications and researchers in the clinical use of TMS. We, therefore, encourage visitors to particate in both days. In the morning there will be theoretical lectures and in the afternoon we have planned practical workshops with fully equiped TMS, EMG and Neuronavigation setups (see below).
Guest Speakers
Go to the speakers page for more information on our speakers.
Theoretical Lectures
In the morning of the first day several well-known speakers will be lecturing about TMS protocols, equipment, safety, MRI guided neuronavigation and sevaral other topics of interest to the clinical user. In the morning of the second day topics related to combining TMS with neuroimaging methods, novel protocols, combinations of TMS and electromyography (EMG), stroke research and TMS and several other topics will be covered. In addition, we have planned sufficient time for questions between the lectures so there will be ample opportunity for discussion between the participants and the lecturers.
Practical Session
Across both days, several practical workshops on TMS, Neuronavigation, tDCS and EMG are organized, during which you will be able to practice with the equipment yourself, supervised by experienced users.
Preparation and suggested reading
All that is needed for participation in this course is general (but not advanced) background knowledge in the areas listed below. Due to time constraints we are not able to teach these topics during the course, they usually are (and if not should be) covered in general academic training in the neurosciences or in clinical training in neurology/psychiatry.
- Neuroanatomy
- Neurophysiology
- Basic understanding of the physics behind (electro)magnetism
- Basic clinical knowledge on psychiatric and neurological disorders of the brain
If you want to prepare for the course, we suggest the following reading. It is not a requirement, you will hopefully be able to understand most of the course material without it, but it might help.
- "Handbook of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation" by Alvaro Pascual-Leone. ISBN-10: 0340720093; ISBN-13: 978-0340720097
- "Evidence-based guidelines on the therapeutic use of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)", consensus paper by Lefaucheur and many others
Organizers
This course is organized by Brain Science Tools BV, a UMC Utrecht company active in MRI guided TMS equipment, in collaboration with Soterix Medical and Neurosoft.
Contact
For additional information on the TMS course please contact info@brainsciencetools.com.