Temporal Interference (TI) Stimulation Boosts Functional Connectivity in Human Motor Cortex: A Comparison Study with Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS)

Temporal interference (TI) could stimulate deep motor cortex and induce movement without affecting the overlying cortex in previous mouse studies. However, there is still lack of evidence on potential TI effects in human studies. To fill this gap, we collected resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data on 40 healthy young participants both before and during TI stimulation on the left primary motor cortex (M1). We also chose a widely used simulation approach (tDCS) as a baseline condition. In the stimulation session, participants were randomly allocated to 2 mA TI or tDCS for 20 minutes. We used a seed-based whole brain correlation analysis method to quantify the strength of functional connectivity among different brain regions. Our results showed that both TI and tDCS significantly boosted functional connection strength between M1 and secondary motor cortex (premotor cortex and supplementary motor cortex). This is the first time to demonstrate substantial stimulation effect of TI in the human brain.