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Part of our mission with Studdy Buddy is to help people by telling them about the awesome experiences they can have helping to advance science while making some money. Here is a story about the experiences of a friend and I who both took part in the same research exploring the effectiveness of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) as a therapy for pain treatment. TMS therapy is commonly used to treat depression and is slowly becoming a tool for pain management. Our experiences differed, and he’ll describe his in a coming article.
The study started out with receiving an MRI of my brain. During the same initial session, the researchers obtained my baseline tolerance for pain using a number of measures. In the first, I’d place my hand in cold water, and the water would steadily decrease in temperature until I signaled the stimulus felt painful. The next pain tolerance test involved them pressing a gauge with a pencil eraser sized point into a specific spot on my forearm near my elbow. I was again instructed to let them know when the stimulus felt painful. A final pain test involved a metal block about an inch and half square which was placed on my forearm. They heated and cooled the block at a steady rate of about 1 degree per 1 second. I would again tell them when the stimulus became painful.
After the researchers got my pain tolerance baseline, the fun really began. They put a 3-D image of my brain on their computer screen using the MRI scan they had just done. Then the researchers put little ball shaped sensors on my head, neck, and chest as though I were in the motion capture studio for a Madden football video game.
They set up other sensors around the room, all pointed at me. They did some calibration like jaw movements and brow shrugs, so they knew exactly where my head and neck were in the space. Coupled with the image of my brain on their screen, these readings gave the researchers a very good idea of where specific structures of my brain were.
The next part was not much fun, but it was exhilarating. They placed a 90’s laptop looking piece of metal—the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation machine—on a specific location on my head and sent a magnetic pulse through my skull and into my brain. Depending on where they focused the pulse and the strength of the pulse, my arms or legs would tingle or move on their own. When they were able to move a specific arm or leg, they successfully located the part of my brain responsible for that particular movement. Based on these successful pinpoints, they were able to locate the specific pain center they wanted to target with the treatments.
On a fun note, everyone has a different threshold for what strength of stimulation will elicit movement in the limbs. While the researchers were finding my threshold, they applied a little too much stimulation, and both my arms and legs jolted so suddenly that I almost fell out of my chair!
The first session was the longest. The rest of the 5 sessions were each about an hour long. At these sessions, I received 20 minutes of targeted TMS therapy. Using all the information the researchers had obtained about my brain and its structures, they targeted pain centers within my brain with the TMS therapy. The researchers targeted a couple different locations of my brain during the various sessions, but each individual session targeted one area. There would be a pulse for about 3 seconds followed by a 60 second break. Before and after the TMS session occurred, I went through the same water bath sensitivity tests and pain assessment. The idea was to see whether the TMS changed my perception of pain in any way.
The TMS itself was a little uncomfortable. I wouldn’t say it was painful, but the sensation was strong and very weird. The machine would make a “tink, tink, tink, tink” noise when the stimulation was occurring. I’m not sure if the tinking is a result of the machine’s function or if it was done to condition me. During one of the sessions, I heard the tinking, but the sensation was not as uncomfortable as normal. I had a feeling towards the end that the session must have been a placebo. They didn’t confirm this with me, but I’m 95% sure that session was a placebo even though I doubted at points that it was and figured I had just gotten used to the discomfort of the stimulation. This seemed to me to be a well designed study including a placebo day, and it may be that the tinking sound was designed to keep the researchers as well as the subjects from knowing whether the session was a treatment session or a placebo. As you’ll see, my friend’s account of this same study solidifies the assertation that this study was well designed.
I was paid a total of $175 for completing the entire study, $25 for each session and $50 for the initial session. I received a check a week or so after each session. I got some headaches after the first couple of sessions, but I was completely fine the other sessions after getting accustomed to the unique stimulus. I had a lot of fun participating in this study, and I thought the methods were really clever and novel. TMS therapy has a lot of promise in treating pain especially as research improves on administration of the therapy. TMS is also being used to treat depression.