This page is designed for anyone who is interesting in using the TMS facility but isn't sure how to get started. There are two main classes of users: those with previous TMS experience who simply need access to the facility and those who may not have TMS experience yet but would like to get started conducting their own TMS experiments. Hopefully this page will help in both cases.

If you don't already have TMS experience, probably the best way to break in, so to speak, is to collaborate with one of the many groups, either here in CPB or over at the ICN, doing TMS. Please see the Research page for information about these groups as well as contact links.

The following steps should provide all the information you need to get started:

1. Ethics. All experiments must have ethics approval before a single subject can be run.
2. Costs. In order to maintain and support this shared facility PIs are asked to contribute financially to the lab. This can be done in one of two ways:
   
   
   1. For a one-off experiment, the cost is £500. Often, the results of an experiment can then be used to obtain funding for follow up work.
   2. If you are planning to run multiple experiments, then then we ask for the cost of one new TMS coil per year. To get an up-to-date price estimate, please contact the Sales department at MagStim for a quote.
   In both cases, the funds will be charged before running the experiment(s), to avoid chasing people. This money is used to purchase new coils, additional trackers, update computers, fix broken equipment, update software licenses, purchase new equipment, purchase supplies, and generally maintain the facility. The goal is to be flexible and promote use of the facilities, so if you would like to do some initial TMS work -- perhaps in preparation for writing a grant -- then please contact me to make special arrangements.
3. Safety training. Everyone who actually plans to hold a TMS coil when conducting an experiment needs to have completed either a first aid or a specialized TMS safety training course. [Gotta figure out details with Vin.]
4. Room access. To get access to room 207a, you will need to get a key from John Draper. The key code is A118 and typically involves going to that central key place over in the Hodgkins building.
5. Accessing the web-base TMS calendar. To schedule lab time, you'll need an authorized account for the web-based TMS calendar. This requires that you have a googlemail (or gmail) email account. Once you have your email address, please let me know your googlemail account name, and I will add you to the authorized users list.
6. Login for Brainsight iMac. Each lab that uses the TMS facility has a different login on the Brainsight iMac. When you are ready to begin using that system, please email me and I will setup a new lab account for you.
7. Lab procedures. There is a page of procedures that are specific to the TMS facility and all users are responsible for their full content. These provide information about using the TMS system(s), the Brainsight system, the scheduling calendar, etc. Please be sure to read these thoroughly.
8. Joining the TMS user email list. We recommend that you sign up for this email list which is used to share information among the community of researchers using the CPB TMS facility.