, /PRNewswire/ -- New research by scientists at the and offers an unprecedented look at how neurons respond to ES. Far from being uniform, different types of neurons showed distinct patterns of 'syncing up' with electrical fields. These patterns varied depending on the rate at which the ES was delivered.
, said , Ph.D., the paper's first author and a Senior Scientist at the Allen Institute.
"With this study, we now have a much better idea of what types of stimulation work for specific cell classes," she said. "We can use that knowledge to develop more efficient ways of using electrical stimulation to treat disorders." Using tissue samples from mice and humans, the research team delivered oscillating waves of ES within tens of micrometers of individual neurons.
This extraordinary precision enabled an unprecedented look at electrical stimulation's impact at a single-cell level. They observed strong, cell-class-specific responses. Excitatory neurons synchronized firing with both slow and fast stimulation frequencies, while inhibitory neurons primarily responded to fast frequencies.
These class-specific responses are significant, Lee said, because they reveal that adjusting the stimulation frequency allows for the selective targeting of different neurons. That discovery could lead to more precise therapies to modulate neural activity. For example, inhibitory neurons that express a protein called parvalbumin are implicated in epilepsy and in cognitive dysfunctions, she noted.
This.