King Randy L, Brown Julian R, Pauly Kim Butts
Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA; Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford, California, USA; Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
Ultrasound Med Biol. 2014 Jul;40(7):1512-22. doi: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2014.01.020. Epub 2014 Mar 15.
Developments in the use of ultrasound to stimulate and modulate neural activity have raised the possibility of using ultrasound as a new investigative and therapeutic tool in brain research. Although the phenomenon of ultrasound-induced neurostimulation has a long history dating back many decades, until now there has been little evidence of a clearly localized effect in the brain, a necessary requirement for the technique to become genuinely useful. Here we report clearly distinguishable effects in sonicating rostral and caudal regions of the mouse motor cortex. Motor responses measured by normalized electromyography in the neck and tail regions changed significantly when sonicating the two different areas of motor cortex. Response latencies varied significantly according to sonication location, suggesting that different neural circuits are activated depending on the precise focus of the ultrasound beam. Taken together, our findings present good evidence of the ability to target selective parts of the motor cortex with ultrasound neurostimulation in the mouse, an advance that should help to set the stage for developing new applications in larger animal models, including humans.
超声用于刺激和调节神经活动的进展,引发了将超声作为脑研究中新的研究和治疗工具的可能性。尽管超声诱导神经刺激现象有着数十年的悠久历史,但直到现在,几乎没有证据表明其在大脑中有明显的局部效应,而这是该技术真正发挥作用的必要条件。在此,我们报告了在对小鼠运动皮层的吻侧和尾侧区域进行超声处理时明显可区分的效应。当对运动皮层的两个不同区域进行超声处理时,通过颈部和尾部区域的标准化肌电图测量的运动反应发生了显著变化。反应潜伏期根据超声处理位置的不同而有显著差异,这表明根据超声束的精确焦点会激活不同的神经回路。综上所述,我们的研究结果充分证明了在小鼠中利用超声神经刺激靶向运动皮层特定部位的能力,这一进展应为在包括人类在内的大型动物模型中开发新应用奠定基础。