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of life, the “Wada test” (Elliott et al., 2013; Woermann et al., 2003; Baxendale, 2009)
is conducted to determine what side of the subject’s brain is used for language proces-
sing: sodium amytal is injected through the carotid arteries until the hemispheric func-
tion is suppressed, and the speech arrest occurs on the side of the brain that needs to
be detected for lobectomy. rTMS can be considered a Wada test alternative when
positioning the excitation coil above the left inferior frontal region and of the patient
and using frequencies between 8 and 25 Hz for 10 s (Hallet, 2000).
Besides rTMS, another technique is the paired-pulse TMS (Kobayashi and Pascual-
Leone, 2003; Thickbroom et al., 2006; Peinemann et al., 2001), which is used for the
evaluation of facilitatory and inhibitory intracortical mechanisms in the motor cortex.
This method combines a subthreshold conditioning stimulus with a suprathreshold test
stimulus applied at short time intervals (1 20 ms) provided by the same magnetic coil.
Paired-pulse TMS is also used when stimulating two different brain regions using the
same magnetic stimulus for evaluating interhemispheric and intracortical connections
in motor control or movement disorders.
In neurosurgery, TMS is an important tool for surgical planning and intraoperative
monitoring (Bestmann et al., 2006; Hartwigsen et al., 2010). Along with functional
MRI, TMS can provide information regarding the causality between brain activity
and behavior, thus estimating if damaging a certain brain region is likely to become a
postsurgical failure.
Pain is defined as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with
actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage” (Merskey and
Bogduk, 1994; Dowalti, 2017). In particular, back pain is one of the most widespread
cause of people’s use of absence at work, and it is a primary reason for disability
worldwide (Mayo, 2020). Chronic back pain persists for more than 12 weeks and is
caused by degenerative or traumatic vertebral processes. It is also the most expensive
benign health condition and one of the main causes of activity restrictions for persons
less than 45 years of age.
The spine is a complicated structure that provides essential functions such as sup-
port, movement, and protection. The spinal cord harm is a disturbing condition that
can produce prejudiced or complete loss of control of movements. It could distress the
patient’s corporeal, psychosomatic, and social well-being. The lumbar magnetic stimula-
tion (LMS) is applied to restore motor functions, it is used to map the motor cortex
and may decrease the spasticity of the lower limbs, it may help recuperate the bladder
control while diminishing the risks of recurrent catheter usage (ScienceDaily, 2019),
and it may be used to diagnose lumbosacral motor radiculopathy, or lumbar spondylo-
sis (Davey et al., 1994).
FDA approves MS procedure in bladder rehabilitation but its role is experimental, for
the time being. LMS is used also to stimulate the expiratory muscles (Lin et al., 2001)
and to control the neurogenic bowel dysfunction in patients with spinal cord injury