The Sequential Visual Isometric Pinch Task (SVIPT) (Coxon, Peat & Byblow, 2014) was used to measure motor skills (figure 5). Participants sat in front of a 20-inch computer screen. Participants had to move a cursor on the screen as correct as possible by pinching a force transducer with their left thumb and index finger (non-dominant hand). The muscle used for this task, the FDI, is the same as stimulated with TMS. The screen showed a home box and 5 numbered boxes in a horizontal row. The standard position of the cursor was the home box, the one on the left. The 5 numbered boxes had the positions from left to right: 4, 1, 3, 5, 2. The order in which the cursor should be moved is 1 to 5. The force needed to reach the number had a logarithmic scale. To reach the last box, number…show more content… Raw outcome data were checked for quality. Data were labelled as missing values if noise > 100 μV and standard deviation > 20 μV. The effect of iTBS (expressed as MEP size) was tested for normal distribution. Because this was not normally distributed, the median MEP size was used and not the mean MEP size. The median MEP size of baseline was set at 100%. The median MEP outcomes at 0, 10, 20 and 30 minutes after iTBS were expressed as a percentage compared to baseline. Because MEP sizes were not normally distributed, the non-parametric Friedman test (non-parametric test for repeated measures) was conducted to assess whether iTBS induced a significant effect over time, for healthy subjects and Nf1 patients separately. When a significant overall effect was obtained, pairwise comparisons between baseline and time points after iTBS were performed with Wilcoxon tests (post hoc test for repeated measures Friedman test). This research does not include a comparison between the healthy subjects and NF1 patients because the difference in sample size is too
