Ultrasonic Modulation of Neuronal Activity

Recently, ultrasound is emerging as an advantageous neuromodulation method due to its noninvasiveness and the high spatial resolution. However, the underlying mechanism have not been elucidated yet. Furthermore, the effective parameters for ultrasound neuromodulation is not well established. In this study, we aim to determine the optimized ultrasound condition using cultured neurons on microelectrode arrays. Various combination of ultrasound parameters were tested on the cultured neural cells. With 0.5 MHz center frequency ultrasound, 7.66 W/cm
²
spatial peak pulse average intensity, 3.83 W/cm
²
spatial peak temporal average acoustic intensity, 50 % duty cycle and 1 kHz pulse repetition frequency were the most effective to modulate the activity of neurons.