Transcranial focused ultrasound modulates the activity of primary somatosensory cortex in humans

Legon, Wynn; Sato, Tomokazu; Opitz, Alexander; Mueller, Jenna L.; Barbour, Aaron J.; Williams, Amanda; Tyler, William J.

doi:10.1038/nn.3620

Cited by 808 publications

(752 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Developing low intensity applications include opening of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and direct ultrasonic neuromodulation and stimulation (UNMS). Both techniques have recently been extended to human subjects and are under active research [3,4]. The biggest challenge to ultrasonic brain therapy is the presence of the skull, which aberrates and attenuates incident wavefronts, and reduces the effectiveness of geometrical focusing [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity of simulated transcranial ultrasound fields to acoustic medium property maps

et al. 2017

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Abstract.High intensity transcranial focused ultrasound is an FDA approved treatment for essential tremor, while low-intensity applications such as neurostimulation and opening the blood brain barrier are under active research. Simulations of transcranial ultrasound propagation are used both for focusing through the skull, and predicting intracranial fields. Maps of the skull acoustic properties are necessary for accurate simulations, and can be derived from medical images using a variety of methods. The skull maps range from segmented, homogeneous models, to fully heterogeneous models derived from medical image intensity. In the present work, the impact of uncertainties in the skull properties is examined using a model of transcranial propagation from a single element focused transducer. The impact of changes in bone layer geometry and the sound speed, density, and acoustic absorption values is quantified through a numerical sensitivity analysis. Sound speed is shown to be the most influential acoustic property, and must be defined with less than 4% error to obtain acceptable accuracy in simulated focus pressure, position, and volume. Changes in the skull thickness of as little as 0.1 mm can cause an error in peak intracranial pressure of greater than 5%, while smoothing with a 1 mm 3 kernel to imitate the effect of obtaining skull maps from low resolution images causes an increase of over 50% in peak pressure. The numerical results are confirmed experimentally through comparison with sonications made through 3D printed and resin cast skull bone phantoms.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity of simulated transcranial ultrasound fields to acoustic medium property maps

et al. 2017

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“…Unlike DBS, non-invasive brain stimulation generally affects larger and more superficial areas of the brain, but researchers are seeking to improve spatial resolution with new magnetic coil shapes for TMS and new electrode configurations for tDCS. Focused ultrasound is also being explored as a means to stimulate more precisely delimited brain regions 4 . Pharmacological agonists and antagonists of particular neurotransmitter systems can be used to experimentally manipulate the human brain at the molecular level, although with imperfect specificity 5 .…”

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confidence: 99%

Progress and challenges in probing the human brain

Poldrack

Farah

2015

Nature

248

153

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“…Eventually, in 2014, Tyler's group advanced the technique into humans, stimulating the somatosensory cortex, a brain area that processes tactile information 6 . A team led by Seung-Schik Yoo of the Catholic University of Korea in Incheon extended that work to the primary visual cortex, which controls eyesight, in 2016 (ref.…”

Section: Early Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ultrasound for the brain

Landhuis¹

2017

Nature

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A man comes into the clinic, hands trembling. He can barely write or hold a cup of water. He straps on a specialized head device, lies back and slides into a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Across the room, a physician pushes a button -and the shaking stops. Handed a piece of paper, the man signs his name legibly, hands steady.This kind of transformation is not wishful thinking. Videos documenting such interventions are readily available online. At their heart is a newly approved technology that uses MRI to aim ultrasonic waves -best known for use in prenatal monitoring -at specific areas of the brain. "We can focus the ultrasound through the skull to a part of the thalamus about the size of a grain of rice, " says W. Jamie Tyler, a neuroscientist who studies non-invasive brain stimulation at Arizona State University in Tempe. In that scenario, ultrasound heats and kills neurons in the thalamus, the brain area thought to give rise to a movement disorder called essential tremor, which affects millions of people worldwide. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved focused ultrasound thalamotomy as a treatment for people with essential tremor who haven't responded to medication.Today, some scientists are setting their sights on another frontier. By influencing the brain more subtly -zapping small groups of neurons enough to boost or suppress their activity without killing them outright -ultrasound could potentially treat other movement disorders, as well as depression, anxiety and a host of intractable neuropsychiatric disorders, as easily and painlessly as the procedure that calms shaking hands, says Shy Shoham, a biomedical engineer from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa who is starting a lab at New York University Langone Medical Center.The emerging technology, called focusedultrasound neuromodulation, makes use of energies at least an order of magnitude lower than those used for treating tremor. Instead of blasting and killing brain cells, Shoham says, "you basically dial down the system".To some extent, other non-invasive techniques can already do this using magnetic fields or direct electric currents. Transcranial TECHNOLOGY FEATURE © 2 0 1 7 M a c m i l l a n P u b l i s h e r s L i m i t e d , p a r t o f S p r i n g e r N a t u r e . A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d .

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Transcranial focused ultrasound modulates the activity of primary somatosensory cortex in humans

Cited by 808 publications

References 51 publications

Sensitivity of simulated transcranial ultrasound fields to acoustic medium property maps

Sensitivity of simulated transcranial ultrasound fields to acoustic medium property maps

Progress and challenges in probing the human brain

Ultrasound for the brain

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