Transcranial ultrasound stimulation of the human motor cortex

Yi Zhang; Liyuan Ren; Kai Liu; Shanbao Tong; Ti-Fei Yuan; Junfeng Sun

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.103429

Transcranial ultrasound stimulation of the human motor cortex

iScience. 2021 Nov 13;24(12):103429. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103429. eCollection 2021 Dec 17.

Authors

Yi Zhang^{1

2}, Liyuan Ren², Kai Liu², Shanbao Tong², Ti-Fei Yuan^{1

3

4}, Junfeng Sun^{2

5}

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200030, China.
² School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200230, China.
³ Co-innovation Center of Neuroregeneration, Nantong University, Nantong, Jiangsu 226019, China.
⁴ Translational Research Institute of Brain and Brain-Like Intelligence, Shanghai Fourth People's Hospital Affiliated to Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
⁵ Brain Science and Technology Research Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200230, China.

Abstract

It has been 40 years since the report of long-term synaptic plasticity on the rodent brain. Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) shows advantages in spatial resolution and penetration depth when compared with electrical or magnetic stimulation. The repetitive TUS (rTUS) can induce cortical excitability alteration on animals, and persistent aftereffects were observed. However, the effects of rTUS on synaptic plasticity in humans remain unelucidated. In the current study, we applied a 15-min rTUS protocol to stimulate left primary motor cortex (l-M1) in 24 male healthy participants. The single-pulsed transcranial magnetic stimulation-evoked motor evoked potential and Stop-signal task was applied to measure the rTUS aftereffects. Here, we report that conditioning the human motor cortex using rTUS may produce long-lasting and statistically significant effects on motor cortex excitability as well as motor behavior, without harmful side effects observed. These findings suggest a considerable potential of rTUS in cortical plasticity modulation and clinical intervention for impulsivity-related disorders.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Neuroscience; Techniques in neuroscience.