Sanchez-Romero Ruben, Akyuz Sibel, Krekelberg Bart
Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, United States of America.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2025 Sep 9;21(9):e1013471. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013471. eCollection 2025 Sep.
Research into the mechanisms underlying neuromodulation by tES using in-vivo animal models is key to overcoming experimental limitations in humans and essential to building a detailed understanding of the in-vivo consequences of tES. Insights from such animal models are needed to develop targeted and effective therapeutic applications of non-invasive brain stimulation in humans. The sheer difference in scale and geometry between animal models and the human brain contributes to the complexity of designing and interpreting animal studies. Here, we introduce EFMouse, a toolbox that extends previous approaches to model intracranial electric fields and generate predictions that can be tested with in-vivo recordings in mice. Novel functionality includes the ability to capture typical surgical approaches in the mouse (e.g., cranial recording windows), the placement of stimulation electrodes anywhere in or on the animal, and novel ways to report field predictions, including some refined measures of focality and direction homogeneity, and quantification based on regions defined in the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas. Although the EFMouse toolbox is generally applicable to planning and designing tES studies in mice, we illustrate its use by posing questions about transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) experiments with the goal of targeting the left visual cortex of the mouse. The EFMouse toolbox is publicly available at https://github.com/klabhub/EFMouse.
利用体内动物模型研究经颅电刺激（tES）神经调节的潜在机制，是克服人体实验局限性的关键，也是深入了解tES体内效应的必要条件。需要从这些动物模型中获取见解，以开发针对人类的非侵入性脑刺激的靶向且有效的治疗应用。动物模型与人类大脑在规模和几何结构上的巨大差异，导致了设计和解释动物研究的复杂性。在此，我们介绍EFMouse，这是一个工具箱，它扩展了先前的方法来模拟颅内电场，并生成可通过小鼠体内记录进行测试的预测。新功能包括能够捕捉小鼠典型的手术方法（例如，颅骨记录窗口）、在动物体内或体表任何位置放置刺激电极，以及报告场预测的新方法，包括一些聚焦性和方向均匀性的精细测量，以及基于艾伦小鼠脑图谱中定义区域的量化。尽管EFMouse工具箱通常适用于规划和设计小鼠tES研究，但我们通过提出关于经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）实验的问题来说明其用途，目标是靶向小鼠的左侧视觉皮层。EFMouse工具箱可在https://github.com/klabhub/EFMouse上公开获取。
