• Casey J Whife, Ann-Maree Vallence, Dale W Edgar, and Fiona M Wood.
• Burn Injury Research Unit, School of Surgery, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia.
• Burns. 2019 Aug 1; 45 (5): 1131-1138.

ObjectiveThe study aimed to investigate short-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI) in burns survivors and non-injured controls, and establish whether paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a sensitive tool to investigate SICI after burn-injury.MethodsBurn survivors underwent experimental assessments at 6- and 12-weeks after injury, and control participants underwent two equivalent sessions 6 weeks apart. Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to record motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) from a hand muscle and paired-pulse TMS was used to measure SICI. Functional measures were obtained for comparison at 12-weeks after injury.ResultsThere was no significant difference in SICI between burns survivors and non-injured controls at either 6- or 12-weeks after burn injury. There was no evidence of correlations between SICI and functional outcome measures in burns survivors.ConclusionsThese results show that paired-pulse TMS is a useful method for investigating cortical inhibition following burn injury, and that SICI circuits in the primary motor cortex are not affected by minor burn injury. This study presents details for definitive future studies of primary motor cortex function after minor burn injury.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved.

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