2019 Volume 43 Issue 1 Pages 41-45
This study investigated the effects of click sounds on the detection of somatosensory stimulus by repetitive peripheral magnetic stimulation (rPMS). Nineteen healthy volunteers carried out the somatosensory stimulus detection tasks in which they were asked to raise their left arm only when they detected somatosensory stimulus on their right thigh by rPMS. This study had two conditions: click sounds condition and no click sounds condition. rPMS was presented to participants at a stimulus frequency of 10 Hz, stimulus time of 2 s, and stimulus intensity of 0.6 – 1.4 times their sensory threshold. Each participant performed 90 trials of the task in each condition using the method of constant stimuli. We calculated the proportion of the detections of each stimulus intensity and analyzed the psychometric function of each condition. As a result, the detection threshold in the click sounds condition was lower than the no click sounds condition. This finding suggests that click sounds facilitates detection of somatosensory stimulus by rPMS.
