Neural response to acoustic stimulation mediated by piezoelectric nanoparticles

The most commonly employed neuromodulation approaches used today either require invasive procedures such as surgical implantation of electrodes or photon-emitting devices, or lack sensitivity and selectivity being based on electromagnetic fields. One of the challenges for neuroscience is to identify new stimulation strategies, which balance efficacy with invasiveness. A promising family of non-invasive neuromodulation approaches exploits ultrasound (US), which can be focused in order to reach deep brain regions through the skull. In this work, we investigate the in vitro electrophysiological response of neuronal networks, treated with piezoelectric barium titanate nanoparticles (BTNPs), to short US pulses. We observed that US causes a reproducible and reversible increase in the network activity. Without BTNPs or with non-piezoelectric BTNPs, the US stimulus does not affect the spontaneous electrical activity of the network.