RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Mechanistic modeling suggests that low-intensity focused ultrasound can selectively recruit myelinated or unmyelinated nerve fibers
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.11.19.390070
DO 10.1101/2020.11.19.390070
A1 Lemaire, Théo
A1 Vicari, Elena
A1 Neufeld, Esra
A1 Kuster, Niels
A1 Micera, Silvestro
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/20/2020.11.19.390070.abstract
AB Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Stimulation (LIFUS) holds promise for the remote modulation of neuronal activity, but an incomplete mechanistic characterization hinders its clinical maturation. Here, we developed a computational framework to model intramembrane cavitation in multi-compartmental, morphologically-realistic neuronal representations, and used it to investigate ultrasound neuromodulation of peripheral nerves by spatially-varying pressure fields. Our findings show that LIFUS offers distinct parametric sub-spaces to selectively recruit myelinated or unmyelinated axons and modulate their spiking activity over physiologically relevant regimes and within safe exposure limits. This singular feature, explained by fiber-specific differences in membrane electromechanical coupling, consistently explains recent empirical findings and suggests that LIFUS can preferentially target nociceptive and sensory fibers to enable peripheral therapeutic applications not addressable by electric stimulation. These results open up new opportunities for the development of more selective and effective peripheral neuroprostheses. Our framework can be readily applied to other neural targets to establish application-specific LIFUS protocols.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.