PUBLICATIONS

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings comprising of pre-clinical studies provide early data on the safety of UHF and low-field MRI for DBS. At this stage, studies do not support scanning DBS patients at these field strengths, but provide a framework for developing human studies examining the safety of DBS in non-conventional MRI.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established therapy for advanced medication-resistant Parkinson's disease (PD), yet its ability to alter the course of the disease remains uncertain. Although preclinical research using toxin-induced PD models demonstrate neuroprotective effects, clinical studies in PD patients undergoing DBS have not substantiated these findings. This disconnect may be attributed to factors […]

Implantable silicon neural probes with integrated optical emitters and electrodes are emerging tools for simultaneous optogenetic stimulation and electrophysiological recording in deep brain regions. In parallel, neural probes with microfluidic channels have been developed for localized drug delivery and neurochemical sampling. However, thus far, such fluidic probes have lacked optical and electrical functionalities or been […]

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a movement disorder characterized by alpha-synuclein (a-Syn) aggregation, dopaminergic degeneration, and pathological beta oscillations (13-30 Hz) in the basal ganglia circuit. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective neurosurgical treatment for the motor symptoms of PD. However, the extent to which mitigation of beta oscillations mediates DBS therapeutic effects remains uncertain. […]

Why do some experiences endure in memory better than others? Here we explore the possibility that learning fluctuates rhythmically several times per second, with fortuitously timed experiences being more memorable. Although such fleeting opportunities for encoding would evade our awareness, they are predicted by a prominent model describing how theta rhythms in the brain coordinate […]

Mesial (a.k.a., medial) temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) is the most common focal epilepsy^(1,2) and, in drug-resistant cases, is treated by surgical removal of the anterior temporal lobe, which often shows neuronal loss and gliosis consistent with hippocampal sclerosis (HS)². MTLE with HS has minimal contribution from germline genetic variation³, and is associated with prior precipitating […]

Working memory (WM), the active retention of information over short periods, is a fundamental cognitive function, yet its underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. In rodents, cue-selective "time cells" fire at specific timepoints after a WM memory cue, collectively forming sequences that encode cue-memory and elapsed time, providing a temporal code for maintaining information across time […]

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra (SN), accumulation of alpha-synuclein (a-Syn)-rich aggregates, and the development of both motor and non-motor symptoms. The absence of a cure for PD underscores the critical need for animal models that recapitulate both its molecular hallmarks and the spectrum of behavioral […]

Remembering the temporal order of events is critical for episodic memory, allowing us to link individual events into sequences. While the medial temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex are essential for this process, the underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here we characterized the representation of order information at the level of single neurons and field […]

Controlling whether a given experience is encoded into long-term memory and thus later remembered is a crucial component of our memory system whose failure is often at the root of memory disorders. One brain area that takes part in controlling which experiences are remembered is the amygdala, but the mechanisms by which it does so […]

CONCLUSION: CBW recordings reveal that high-frequency DBS evokes region-specific vascular responses which can be modeled as substantial increases in local blood flow, establishing CBW amplitude as a potential biomarker of subcortical hemodynamics, and a potential therapeutic modality.

Ependymal cells in the adult spinal cord become activated after spinal cord injury (SCI), gaining stem/progenitor cell properties. Although growing evidence has implicated these cells as potential players in the endogenous repair process after injury, their activation to a stem-cell-like state is transient and insufficient for adequate regeneration. Moreover, the drivers of their activation state […]

Accurate brain signal recording and precise electrode placement are critical for the success of neuromodulation therapies such as deep brain stimulation (DBS). Addressing these challenges requires deep brain electrodes that provide high-quality, stable recordings while remaining compatible with high-resolution medical imaging modalities like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Moreover, such electrodes shall be cost-effective, easy to […]

Working memory (WM) enables the temporary maintenance and manipulation of information, supporting flexible, goal-directed behavior. While converging evidence suggests that the hippocampus contributes to WM storage, its causal role in WM remains unclear. Here, we combined simultaneous intracranial single-neuron recordings in the hippocampus and several cortical areas with focal electrical stimulation in the human hippocampus […]

CONCLUSIONS: Individualized treatment decisions are essential, with bilateral DBS providing superior long-term outcomes for both PD and ET.

Channelopathies affecting the hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide gated (HCN or h-) channel and the Kv7 voltage gated m-type potassium (m-) channel present a paradox in epilepsy research: despite experimental evidence that both over- and underexpression of these channels can be epileptogenic, channel overexpression does not appear to increase the excitatory-inhibitory (E-I) balance as caused by channel […]

Building brain foundation models to capture the underpinning neural dynamics of human behavior requires large functional neural datasets for training, which current implantable Brain-Computer Interfaces (iBCIs) cannot achieve due to the instability of rigid materials in the brain. How can we realize high-density neural recordings with wide brain region access at single-neuron resolution, while maintaining […]

CONCLUSIONS: Thus, our study shows that α5-PAM has robust and distinct EEG biomarkers in rodents, indicating that EEG could enable noninvasive monitoring of α5-PAM treatment efficacy.

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The central and peripheral nervous systems are specialized to conduct electrical currents that underlie behaviour. When this multidimensional electrical system is disrupted by degeneration, damage, or disuse, externally applied electrical currents may act to modulate neural structures and provide therapeutic benefit. The administration of electrical stimulation can exert precise and multi-faceted effects at cellular, circuit […]