Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): Development of an alternative placebo system

A placebo (sham) stimulation system for transcranial magnetic stimulation was developed and tested. To achieve the placebo stimulation, the existent systems were studied and the goal was to develop an alternative system which considered every non-magnetically induced feature of the real stimulation, masking them by means of electrical and auditory stimulation, as well as a reduced magnetic field output to prevent cortical stimulation. As a result, placebo stimulation offered convincing sensation masking in most of the test subjects, providing an alternative way to perform control experiments.