2025 in a box

[TheHandLab]

Dear all @TMSMultiLab/meetings @TMSMultiLab ,

In the spring of 2011 I interviewed two potential candidates for a PhD position using TMS to examine hand-to-mouth coordination movements. One of the interview questions was: "Can you tell me what you know about TMS?" It turned out to be the critical question, because the successful candidate said : "Well, I've only heard about it during my undergraduate studies, but I think it involves a magnet which you place on the head, and when you turn it on you can stimulate the brain to study how it works." To help you understand why we recruited this candidate, the other candidate said: "I think it involves a box."

TMS does indeed involve a box, my fellow stimulators, and this message puts all of 2025 into it!

---

The first five months of 2025 - what seems a lifetime ago - were dominated by the TMS@40 Workshop. Thank you to everyone who helped make it a success, and I, like many others, are sure to spend a happy day or two over the Christmas holidays working on the consensus paper!

Between June and November, our Meetings have included an EMG tutorial, a discussion of background EMG 'noise' in TMS studies, how we might coordinate smaller undergraduate projects, the massive TMS-RAT project to create a reporting assessment tool, the even bigger BigNIBS project, and how we can use the eyes as a window to the soul brain excitability.

---

It's not just our meetings of course. There were at least six other TMS workshops or conferences in 2025. If you know of more, please add them.

---

I also know of a few grant applications and a lot of TMS papers that have been submitted, reviewed, rejected and/or accepted over the last year. Good luck if you are post-submission and pre-decision for anything! No-one has sent me anything in particular, but feel free to reply to this message by posting your highlights and successes of 2025.

---

The next meeting will be given by Dr Giacomo Bertazzoli who will present, promote and discuss the NIBS-BIDS proposal - 14h GMT, last Friday of January, 2026. If you don't know about it yet (and lots of you may not) - BIDS is a global standard for formatting, storing, and sharing brain imaging data. The format for EMG data is in the final stages of approval, and the NIBS-BIDS proposal is now close to being ready for submission. I forsee a world in which BIDS is the only standard for sharing brain imaging and brain stimulation data. Don't miss the boat, be ahead of the curve, and grasp this nettle!

---

Have A Happy Whatever You Celebrate, and see you in 2026!

N