AUTHOR=Zhang Guoqin , Gao Cuihua , Ruan Xiuhang , Liu Yanli , Li Yuting , Li E , Jiang Lisheng , Liu Lingling , Chen Xin , Jiang Xinqing , Xu Guangqing , Lan Yue , Wei Xinhua TITLE=Intermittent Theta-Burst Stimulation Over the Suprahyoid Muscles Motor Cortex Facilitates Increased Degree Centrality in Healthy Subjects JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience VOLUME=14 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00200 DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2020.00200 ISSN=1662-5161 ABSTRACT=
Theta-burst stimulation (TBS), a variant of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), can potentially benefit the treatment of swallowing disorders. However, the after-effects of TBS on the swallowing motor cortex remain uncertain. The newly developed graph-based analysis of the centrality approach has been increasingly used to explore brain networks. The purpose of this study was to identify degree centrality (DC) alterations in the brain network after different TBS protocols were performed over the suprahyoid muscles motor cortex in healthy subjects. A total of 40 right-handed healthy subjects (mean age: 23.73 ± 2.57 years, range: 21–30, 20 females) were included in this study and randomly assigned to two groups, including the continuous TBS (cTBS) group and the intermittent TBS (iTBS) group. All of the subjects underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scanning before and after TBS implementation. Compared to the baseline, cTBS resulted in increased DC values in the left inferior frontal gyrus (