scholarly journals Endogenous Electric Fields May Guide Neocortical Network Activity

Neuron ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavio Fröhlich ◽  
David A. McCormick
2009 ◽  
Vol 69 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 105-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana D. de Lima ◽  
Anne Gieseler ◽  
Thomas Voigt

2020 ◽  
Vol 91 (8) ◽  
pp. e6.3-e7
Author(s):  
Nir Grossman

Nir is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at Imperial College London and a founding fellow of the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK-DRI). The long-term goal of his research is to develop neuromodulatory interventions for neurodegenerative diseases by direct modulation of the underlying aberrant network activity. Nir received a BSc in Physics from the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion), an MSc in Electromagnetic Engineering from the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, and a PhD in Neuroscience from Imperial College London. He then completed a postdoc training, as a Wellcome Trust Fellow, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University. Nir was recently awarded the prestige prize for Neuromodulation from the Science magazine for describing how temporal interfering of kHz electric fields can non-invasively stimulate focal neural structures deep in the brain.Electrical brain stimulation is a key technique in research and clinical neuroscience studies, and also is in increasingly widespread use from a therapeutic standpoint. However, to date all methods of electrical stimulation of the brain either require surgery to implant an electrode at a defined site, or involve the application of non-focal electric fields to large fractions of the brain. We report a noninvasive strategy for electrically stimulating neurons at depth. By delivering to the brain multiple electric fields at frequencies too high to recruit neural firing, but which differ by a frequency within the dynamic range of neural firing, we can electrically stimulate neurons throughout a region where interference between the multiple fields results in a prominent electric field envelope modulated at the difference frequency. We validated this temporal interference (TI) concept via modeling and physics experiments, and verified that neurons in the living mouse brain could follow the electric field envelope. We demonstrate the utility of TI stimulation by stimulating neurons in the hippocampus of living mice without recruiting neurons of the overlying cortex. Finally, we show that by altering the currents delivered to a set of immobile electrodes, we can steerably evoke different motor patterns in living mice.


2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (35) ◽  
pp. 10890-10899 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Golshani ◽  
J. T. Goncalves ◽  
S. Khoshkhoo ◽  
R. Mostany ◽  
S. Smirnakis ◽  
...  

2007 ◽  
Vol 97 (6) ◽  
pp. 4186-4202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilal Haider ◽  
Alvaro Duque ◽  
Andrea R. Hasenstaub ◽  
Yuguo Yu ◽  
David A. McCormick

Spontaneous activity within local circuits affects the integrative properties of neurons and networks. We have previously shown that neocortical network activity exhibits a balance between excitatory and inhibitory synaptic potentials, and such activity has significant effects on synaptic transmission, action potential generation, and spike timing. However, whether such activity facilitates or reduces sensory responses has yet to be clearly determined. We examined this hypothesis in the primary visual cortex in vivo during slow oscillations in ketamine-xylazine anesthetized cats. We measured network activity (Up states) with extracellular recording, while simultaneously recording postsynaptic potentials (PSPs) and action potentials in nearby cells. Stimulating the receptive field revealed that spiking responses of both simple and complex cells were significantly enhanced (>2-fold) during network activity, as were spiking responses to intracellular injection of varying amplitude artificial conductance stimuli. Visually evoked PSPs were not significantly different in amplitude during network activity or quiescence; instead, spontaneous depolarization caused by network activity brought these evoked PSPs closer to firing threshold. Further examination revealed that visual responsiveness was gradually enhanced by progressive membrane potential depolarization. These spontaneous depolarizations enhanced responsiveness to stimuli of varying contrasts, resulting in an upward (multiplicative) scaling of the contrast response function. Our results suggest that small increases in ongoing balanced network activity that result in depolarization may provide a rapid and generalized mechanism to control the responsiveness (gain) of cortical neurons, such as occurs during shifts in spatial attention.


Author(s):  
R. R. Dils ◽  
P. S. Follansbee

Electric fields have been applied across oxides growing on a high temperature alloy and control of the oxidation of the material has been demonstrated. At present, three-fold increases in the oxidation rate have been measured in accelerating fields and the oxidation process has been completely stopped in a retarding field.The experiments have been conducted with an iron-base alloy, Pe 25Cr 5A1 0.1Y, although, in principle, any alloy capable of forming an adherent aluminum oxide layer during oxidation can be used. A specimen is polished and oxidized to produce a thin, uniform insulating layer on one surface. Three platinum electrodes are sputtered on the oxide surface and the specimen is reoxidized.


Author(s):  
Teruo Someya ◽  
Jinzo Kobayashi

Recent progress in the electron-mirror microscopy (EMM), e.g., an improvement of its resolving power together with an increase of the magnification makes it useful for investigating the ferroelectric domain physics. English has recently observed the domain texture in the surface layer of BaTiO3. The present authors ) have developed a theory by which one can evaluate small one-dimensional electric fields and/or topographic step heights in the crystal surfaces from their EMM pictures. This theory was applied to a quantitative study of the surface pattern of BaTiO3).


Author(s):  
John Silcox

Several aspects of magnetic and electric effects in electron microscope images are of interest and will be discussed here. Clearly electrons are deflected by magnetic and electric fields and can give rise to image detail. We will review situations in ferromagnetic films in which magnetic image effects are the predominant ones, others in which the magnetic effects give rise to rather subtle changes in diffraction contrast, cases of contrast at specimen edges due to leakage fields in both ferromagnets and superconductors and some effects due to electric fields in insulators.


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