ABSTRACT
Precision healthcare treats disease at its source, maximizing treatment efficacy while minimizing side effects. Transcranial focused ultrasound brings this methodology to the human brain, delivering focal interventions to deep brain sites without the need for surgeries. Depending on stimulus duration, ultrasound modulates neural activity—which is useful for systematic diagnoses of disease sources—or induces plastic changes and so a durable reset of the sources. In addition, ultrasound can be applied to selectively deliver drugs into specific targets, thus increasing treatment efficacy while sparing other tissues and organs from potential side effects. The agents can be delivered either across an intact blood brain barrier (small drugs) or across a blood brain barrier that is transiently opened by ultrasound (large drugs, genes, stem cells). Clinical translation of these groundbreaking approaches requires a practical system that can deliver ultrasound into specific brain targets on command. We developed a platform with these features and validated its function in nonhuman primates. In particular, we used the platform to modulate two deep brain nuclei—the left and the right lateral geniculate nucleus–during visual choice behavior. We found that specific stimulation parameters reliably yet reversibly modulated the choice behavior. This platform is being used to systematically investigate the space of effective stimulation parameters for transient and durable neuromodulation in nonhuman primates. This noninvasive system can also be applied to subjects with neurological and psychiatric disorders, to modulate specific deep brain targets with the precision and flexibility not previously possible.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.