And furthermore, to what degree would this induction be stable and subject to noise? and in particular, which sources of noises? Any pointer to useful sources is most appreciated.
Sounds like you are talking about transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). It has been in the news recently for it's role in depression and other disorders (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/neuroengineers-crack-the-black-box-of-magnetic-brain-stimulation-therapy) While TMS can be used for depression, "The first successful TMS study was performed in 1985 by Anthony Barker and his colleagues at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, England.[3] Its earliest application demonstrated conduction of nerve impulses from the motor cortex to the spinal cord, stimulating muscle contractions in the hand." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation)
Sounds like you are talking about transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). It has been in the news recently for it's role in depression and other disorders (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/neuroengineers-crack-the-black-box-of-magnetic-brain-stimulation-therapy) While TMS can be used for depression, "The first successful TMS study was performed in 1985 by Anthony Barker and his colleagues at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, England.[3] Its earliest application demonstrated conduction of nerve impulses from the motor cortex to the spinal cord, stimulating muscle contractions in the hand." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation)
The short answer is yes.
TMS is inducing a current in motor neuron, either by passing directly through the motor cortex stimulation, or you can also experience it directly at the motor neuron level.
I was subject in a TMS study, and there was this very distrubing side effect that the motor neurons of my face were catching the signal, therefore my mouth was contracting on each pulse... Usually what they do before targeting the site of interest for the study is to stimulate the premotor cortex with increasing stimulation level until they manage to induce a finger contraction in a reproduceable way. Quite funny to have you hand moving without you being able to control it ^^
However, I'll probably never participate in another TMS study...
There is a lot of papers on influence of TMS on single MNs, e.g. in work of Gandevia et al.
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