{"doi":"10.1016/j.brs.2020.05.012","title":"Can transcranial electrical stimulation motor threshold estimate individualized tDCS doses over the prefrontal cortex? Evidence from reverse-calculation electric field modeling","abstract":"•Reverse-calculation electric field modeling can estimate individualized prefrontal tDCS doses.•Transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) motor thresholds (MTs) correlate with prefrontal tDCS doses.•TES MT or reverse-calculation modeling could become methods to individually dose prefrontal tDCS. We recently conducted a study examining whether transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) motor threshold (MT), reverse-calculation transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) electric field modeling, or both could potentially be used as methods of individualizing tDCS doses(1). We found that TES MT significantly correlates with a reverse-calculated tDCS dosage in the motor cortex and were intrigued by the possibility of using TES MT as an MRI-free method of individually dosing tDCS(1). A limitation of this previous work was that we did not test the utility of TES MT to estimate reverse-calculation tDCS doses outside of the motor cortex. Here we extend this research by assessing whether TES MT correlates with reverse-calculation electric field models of prefrontal stimulation in a common F3-F4 electrode montage that has been used in depression [[2]Brunoni A.R. Boggio P.S. De Raedt R. Bensenor I.M. Lotufo P.A. Namur V. et al.Cognitive control therapy and transcranial direct current stimulation for depression: a randomized, double-blinded, controlled trial.J Affect Disord. 2014; 162: 43-49Crossref PubMed Scopus (154) Google Scholar], drug craving [[3]Alizadehgoradel J. Nejati V. Movahed F.S. Imani S. Taherifard M. Mosayebi-Samani M. et al.Repeated stimulation of the dorsolateral-prefrontal cortex improves executive dysfunctions and craving in drug addiction: a randomized, double-blind, parallel-group study.Brain Stimulation. 2020; 13: 582-593https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2019.12.028Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (42) Google Scholar], working memory [[4]Nissim N.R. O’Shea A. Indahlastari A. Telles R. Richards L. Porges E. et al.Effects of in-scanner bilateral frontal tDCS on functional connectivity of the working memory network in older adults.Front Aging Neurosci. 2019; 11: 51Crossref PubMed Scopus (32) Google Scholar], and many other conditions. In this study we used the same dataset as in Ref. [[1]Caulfield K.A. Badran B.W. DeVries W.H. Summers P.M. Kofmehl E. Li X. et al.Transcranial electrical stimulation motor threshold can estimate individualized tDCS dosage from reverse-calculation electric-field modeling.Brain Stimulation. 2020; 13Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (29) Google Scholar], in which we acquired transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) MT, TES MT, and anatomical T1w MRI scans for 29 healthy adults (15 women, mean age = 26.9, SD = 9.1). We previously described the two-visit study protocol in depth in Ref. [[1]Caulfield K.A. Badran B.W. DeVries W.H. Summers P.M. Kofmehl E. Li X. et al.Transcranial electrical stimulation motor threshold can estimate individualized tDCS dosage from reverse-calculation electric-field modeling.Brain Stimulation. 2020; 13Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (29) Google Scholar] but briefly describe it here. In Visit 1, we placed a plastic cap on each participant’s head and used a closed-loop TMS-motor evoked potential (MEP) acquisition setup using single pulses of TMS (Magstim BiStim machine with 70mm figure-of-eight Remote Coil; Whitland, Wales, UK) over the left motor hotspot and electromyography (EMG) electrodes over the contralateral right hand [[5]Badran B. Caulfield K. Lopez J. Cox C. Stomberg- Firestein S. Devries W. et al.Personalized TMS helmets for quick and reliable TMS administration outside of a laboratory setting.Brain Stimulation. 2020; 13Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (9) Google Scholar]. We defined a positive MEP as having a peak-to-peak amplitude of ≥0.05mV, and used PEST software (https://www.clinicalresearcher.org/software.htm) to determine the next stimulation intensity for MT acquisition [[6]Mishory A. Molnar C. Koola J. Li X. Kozel F.","journal":"Brain stimulation","year":2020,"id":99932,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":29,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9511,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":266103,"name":"Bashar W. Badran","orcid":"0000-0001-9376-6440","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":289791,"name":"Xingbao Li","orcid":"0000-0002-3284-9047","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106035,"name":"Marom Bikson","orcid":"0000-0002-0493-8333","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106043,"name":"Mark S. George","orcid":"0000-0003-1767-1815","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":289790,"name":"Kevin A. Caulfield","orcid":"0000-0001-8268-4204","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":12,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T22:38:09.754371Z","pmid":"32439562","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}