Silicon Spike - User Manual
Last updated
Last updated
Here we report a novel and reliable tool to trigger transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) devices with almost null latencies, easing the task execution during lab experiments. This goal has been achieved with exceptionally good results. Hence, we decided to make the Silicon Spike triggerbox a freely accessible device for anyone to reproduce, implement, and share. If you are using the Silicon Spike triggerbox in your experiment, please acknowledge our work ().
Relative to the most commonly available triggerbox devices, the advantage of Silicon Spike consists in leaving all of the computations necessary to trigger the TMS to its internal motherboard, without interfering with the computer executing the experimental task. It allows control of all the stimulation parameters for the single pulse (spTMS), repetitive/rhythmic (rTMS), and dual coil (dcTMS/ccPAS) protocols with few lines of code, also making it accessible for those without any programming knowledge. It is also possible to set the rTMS parameters to obtain a continuous (cTBS) or intermittent (iTBS) theta-burst stimulation. The stimulation parameters can be declared using any software allowing serial communication; here we will cover in detail this procedure using MATLAB and Python.
Ippolito, G., Quettier, T., Borgomaneri, S., & Romei, V. (2025). Silicon Spike: An Arduino-based low-cost and open-access triggerbox to precisely control TMS devices. Behavior Research Methods, 57(5), 145.
