Neurotechnology has advanced a lot in recent years. In this blog post I will be focusing on neurotechnology involved in neural stimulation. There are quite a few different devices one could use to stimulate neurons. For example, there is Deep Brain Stimulation, in which electrodes are implanted surgically into the brain to send electrical currents to the targeted area. This is used often in patients with epilepsy and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's. This form of neural stimulation uses electrical stimulation. The stimulation I will be focusing on in this blog post is called Magnetic Stimulation. In the Empirical article, Somatic Inhibition by Microscopic Magnetic Stimulation, by Hui Ye and Lauryn Barret, researchers were focused on magnetic stimulation and its effects of neurological stimulation in a marine mollusk, Aplysia Californica using miniature coil technology. Instead of focusing on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) researchers used a miniature coil technology. This would prevent a lot of the limitations of TMS such as the lack of focal stimulation on specific neuronal targets. Also, TMS can only target superficial cortical regions and cannot reach subcortical areas of the brain. The spatial resolution of the miniature coil technology is much better than TMS and does not need direct contact with brain tissue which increases biocompatibility (Ye, 2021). It provides the same focal stimulation as an electrode but much safer. The miniature coil technology is also portable and it is not needed to be used at a medical facility. In this study, researchers used this technology on Aplysia Californica to inhibit neuron activity in the mollusk. The magnetic stimulation causes a local depolarization in the surrounding neurons and causes their sodium channels to deactivate. This prevents action potentials from conducting and effectively inhibits the neurons. This form of neurotechnology allows for single neuron targeting which can allow for much more accurate stimulation of certain cortical areas. Hui ye and his associates have also used this technology to modulate feeding responses in Aplysia Californica. They did this by blocking the nerves/muscles that control radula retraction, increasing the intensity of the swallowing response. This leads me to the question of, can this technology be used to aid severe epilepsy and prevent seizures from occurring?
In the article, Focal Suppression of Epileptiform Activity in the Hippocampus by a High-Frequency Magnetic Field, Hui ye, Vincent Chiun-Fan Chen, Jessica Helon, and Nicole Apostolopoulos are focusing on how to prevent seizures using miniature coil technology. They acknowledged previous technologies such as DBS and recognize how successful they are. However, they do have the limitations that have been previously stated. Researchers designed a system that used a miniature coil to generate a sufficiently strong electric field. They then recorded the in vitro epileptiform activity from prepared hippocampal slices while applying the miniature coil stimulation to the CA3 area. They found that local Epileptiform Activity (EFA) can be reliably inhibited by their miniature coils, especially at the higher frequency range of magnetic stimulation (Ye, 2020). This study tells us that miniature coil technology can be used to inhibit EFA and could be used in the future to treat people with epilepsy with a much safer method than what is currently being used.
References
Ye, H., & Barrett, L. (2021). Somatic inhibition by microscopic magnetic stimulation. Scientific Reports, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93114-x
Ye, H., Chen, V. C. F., Helon, J., & Apostolopoulos, N. (2020). Focal Suppression of Epileptiform Activity in the Hippocampus by a High-frequency Magnetic Field. Neuroscience, 432, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2020.02.018
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