Human brain does all the thought process which helps in decision making and movement of any living organism. For our brain, a new stimulation technique has been developed by a team of medical scientists which uses the focused ultrasound technique with an ability to switch on and off, specific amount of brain neurons. Additionally, it can precisely control the motor activity without any kind of implantation, that is, without any surgical device. Many treatments can be done by brain stimulation as with the growing technology people tend to face lot of problems. Neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and Epilepsy have had a good rate of treatment success. The brain stimulation technique comes with few drawbacks, such as, improper functioning of simulation causes neurons to work unstably after the stimulation. This makes the process of stimulation highly sensitive and should only be done under the expertise guidance. When the stimulation process takes place, it activates specific area and neurons and is considered as a good treatment.
The team led by Hong Chen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering and of radiation oncology at the School of Medicine, is the first to provide direct evidence of non-invasive and cell-type-specific activation of cells. Neurons in the brain of mammals through the combination of the heating effect induced by ultrasound and genetics, called sonothermogenetics is their first work which shows that the combination of ultrasound and genetics can robustly control behavior by stimulating a specific target deep in the brain. The lead research team included experts from both McKelvey School of Engineering and School of Medicine, including Jianmin Cui, professor of biomedical engineering; Joseph P. Culver, professor of radiology, physics, and biomedical engineering; Mark J. Miller, associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases, Department of Medicine and Michael Bruchas, formerly of the University of Washington, now professor of anesthesiology and pharmacology at the University of Washington.
This work gives out evidence that sonothermogenetics induces behavioral responses in free-moving mice while targeting a location deep in the brain. Sonothermogenetics has the potential to transform our approaches to neuroscientific research and provide new ways to understand and to discover the treatment of diseases of the human brain.
