Magnetic stimulation and the crossed-uncrossed difference (CUD) paradigm: selective effects in the ipsilateral and contralateral hemispheres

When a visual target is presented to one hemifield, manual responses made to the target using the ipsilateral hand (uncrossed responses) are faster than responses using the contralateral hand (crossed response), because there is no need for visuomotor information to be transferred between the hemispheres. This difference in response times is termed the crossed-uncrossed difference (CUD) and is a valuable means of estimating interhemispheric transfer time. We aimed to investigate the CUD by applying repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left and right occipital cortex during a lateralized target-detection task. Eleven neurologically healthy subjects, all right-handed, participated in the study. Relative to sham TMS we increased the CUD, by inhibiting the crossed latencies, but only when rTMS was applied to the hemisphere receiving visual information. These results replicate and extend previous findings and suggest the inhibitory rTMS effect under the crossed condition might be because the weak visual output is unable to activate the crossed pathway.