Current orientation induced by magnetic stimulation influences a cognitive task.

The direction of the current induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the motor cortex has been observed to influence the threshold and latency of evoked muscle responses. This study investigates the effect of TMS-induced current orientation (ICO) over the prefrontal cortex, on a specific cognitive task (memory-guided saccade). TMS was applied with a figure-of-eight coil, placed at one of eight different orientations over the prefrontal cortex. The most effective ICO was antero-lateral, which is a different optimal ICO from that seen over the hand area of the motor cortex. This demonstrates that ICO can alter the effect of TMS on cognitive functions and that ICO is an independent variable that should not be ignored when designing TMS studies.