Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129, United States of America.
J Neural Eng. 2019 Apr;16(2):026022. doi: 10.1088/1741-2552/aafc72. Epub 2019 Jan 8.
Neurostimulation technologies are important for studying neural circuits and the connections that underlie neurological and psychiatric disorders. However, current methods come with limitations such as the restraint on movement imposed by the wires delivering stimulation. The objective of this study was to assess whether the e-Particle (EP), a novel wireless neurostimulator, could sufficiently stimulate the brain to modify behavior without these limitations.
Rats were implanted with the EP and a commercially available stimulating electrode. Animals received rewarding brain stimulation, and performance in a conditioned place preference (CPP) task was measured. To ensure stimulation-induced neuronal activation, immediate early gene c-fos expression was also measured.
The EP was validated in a commonly used CPP task by demonstrating that (1) wireless stimulation via the EP induced preference behavior that was comparable to that induced by standard wired electrodes and (2) neuronal activation was observed in projection targets of the stimulation site.
The EP may help achieve a better understanding of existing brain stimulation methods while overcoming their limitations. Validation of the EP in a behavioral model suggests that the benefits of this technology may extend to other areas of animal research and potentially to human clinical applications.
神经刺激技术对于研究神经回路以及神经和精神疾病的基础连接至关重要。然而，当前的方法存在局限性，例如刺激传输线限制了动物的运动。本研究旨在评估新型无线神经刺激器 e-Particle（EP）是否能够在没有这些限制的情况下充分刺激大脑以改变行为。
将 EP 和市售刺激电极植入大鼠。动物接受奖赏性脑刺激，并测量条件性位置偏好（CPP）任务中的表现。为了确保刺激诱导的神经元激活，还测量了即刻早期基因 c-fos 的表达。
EP 通过以下方式在常用的 CPP 任务中得到验证：（1）通过 EP 进行无线刺激可诱导出与标准有线电极诱导的类似偏好行为；（2）在刺激部位的投射靶点中观察到神经元激活。
EP 可能有助于更好地理解现有的脑刺激方法，同时克服其局限性。EP 在行为模型中的验证表明，该技术的益处可能扩展到动物研究的其他领域，并可能扩展到人类临床应用。
