How TMS came of age

On Tuesday 12 Feb 1985, Dr Tony Barker and his PhD student Reza Jalinous packed two suitcases with heavy boxes of electronics, the product of some ten years of research, and made the three hour train journey from Sheffield to the Institute of Neurology in London. They wanted to know if the magnetic stimulator that they had developed to stimulate peripheral nerves might also be able to stimulate the brain, and, more importantly, whether that would be safe. The best person to ask was Prof Pat Merton who, 5 years earlier, had described his own method for stimulating the brain with a high voltage electrical stimulus given through two electrodes attached to the scalp (Merton & Morton, 1980).