The dysfunction of subthalamic nucleus is the main cause of Parkinson’s disease. Local field potentials in human subthalamic nucleus contain rich physiological information. The present study aimed to quantify the oscillatory and dynamic characteristics of local field potentials of subthalamic nucleus, and their modulation by the medication therapy for Parkinson’s disease. The subthalamic nucleus local field potentials were recorded from patients with Parkinson’s disease at the states of on and off medication. The oscillatory features were characterised with the power spectral analysis. Furthermore, the dynamic features were characterised with time-frequency analysis and the coefficient of variation measure of the time-variant power at each frequency. There was a dominant peak at low beta band with medication off. The medication significantly suppressed the low beta component and increased the theta component. The amplitude fluctuation of neural oscillations was measured by the coefficient of variation. The coefficient of variation in 4-7 Hz and 60-66 Hz was increased by medication. These effects proved that medication had significant modulation to subthalamic nucleus neural oscillatory synchronization and dynamic features. The subthalamic nucleus neural activities tend towards stable state under medication. The findings would provide quantitative biomarkers for studying the mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease and clinical treatments of medication or deep brain stimulation.
The possible influence of electromagnetic field (EMF) on the function of neural systems has been widely concerned. In this article, we intend to investigate the effects of long term power frequency EMF exposure on brain cognitive functions and it’s mechanism. The Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were randomly divided into 3 groups: the rats in EMF Ⅰ group were placed in the 2 mT power frequency EMF for 24 days. The rats in EMF Ⅱ group were placed in the 2 mT power frequency EMF for 48 days. The rats in control group were not exposed to the EMF. Then, the 16 channel local field potentials (LFPs) were recorded from rats’ prefrontal cortex (PFC) in each group during the working memory (WM) tasks. The causal networks of LFPs were also established by applying the directed transfer function (DTF). Based on that, the differences of behavior and the LFPs network connection patterns between different groups were compared in order to investigate the influence of long term power frequency EMF exposure on working memory. The results showed the rats in the EMF Ⅱ group needed more training to reach the task correction criterion (over 80%). Moreover, the causal network connection strength and the global efficiency of the rats in EMF Ⅰ and EMF Ⅱ groups were significantly lower than the corresponding values of the control group. Meanwhile, significant differences of causal density values were found between EMF Ⅱ group and the other two groups. These results indicate that long term exposure to 2 mT power frequency EMF will reduce the connection strength and the information transfer efficiency of the LFPs causal network in the PFC, as well as the behavior performance of the rats. These results may explain the effect of EMF exposure on working memory from the view of neural network connectivity and provide a support for further studies on the mechanism of the effect of EMF on cognition.
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation(rTMS) is a painless and non-invasive method for stimulation and modulation in the field of cognitive neuroscience research and clinical neurological regulation. In this paper, adult Wistar rats were divided into the rTMS group and control group randomly. Rats in the rTMS group were stimulated with 5 Hz rTMS for 14 days, while the rats in the control group did not accept any stimulation. Then, the behavior and local field potentials (LFPs) were recorded synchronously when the rats perform a working memory (WM) task with T-maze. Finally, the time-frequency distribution and coherence characteristics of the LFPs signal in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during working memory task were analyzed. The results showed that the rats in the rTMS group needed less training days to reach the task correction criterion than the control group (P < 0.05). Compared with the control group, the rTMS group has higher energy (P < 0.01) in θ band (4~12 Hz) and γ band (30~80 Hz). The coherence between the channel pairs decreases as the spatial distance of the channel pairs increases, and the rTMS group exhibits a higher coherence than the control group (P < 0.01). It is concluded that 5 Hz rTMS can improve the excitability of rat prefrontal cortical neurons to a certain extent, and has a positive effect on the working memory ability of normal rats. The results of this paper may provide important theoretical support for further research on the mechanism of action of rTMS on WM.
Transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation is a new non-invasive neuromodulation technology, in which the induced electric field generated by the coupling effect of ultrasound and static magnetic field are used to regulate the neural rhythm oscillation activity in the corresponding brain region. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation on the information transfer and communication in neuronal clusters during memory. In the experiment, twenty healthy adult Wistar rats were randomly divided into a control group (five rats) and stimulation groups (fifteen rats). Transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation of 0.05~0.15 T and 2.66~13.33 W/cm2 was applied to the rats in stimulation groups, and no stimulation was applied to the rats in the control group. The local field potentials signals in the prefrontal cortex of rats during the T-maze working memory tasks were acquired. Then the coupling differences between delta rhythm phase, theta rhythm phase and gamma rhythm amplitude of rats in different parameter stimulation groups and control group were compared. The experimental results showed that the coupling intensity of delta and gamma rhythm in stimulation groups was significantly lower than that in the control group (P<0.05), while the coupling intensity of theta and gamma rhythm was significantly higher than that in the control group (P<0.05). With the increase of stimulation parameters, the degree of coupling between delta and gamma rhythm showed a decreasing trend, while the degree of coupling between theta and gamma rhythm tended to increase. The preliminary results of this paper indicated that transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation inhibited delta rhythmic neuronal activity and enhanced the oscillation of theta and gamma rhythm in the prefrontal cortex, thus promoted the exchange and transmission of information between neuronal clusters in different spatial scales. This lays the foundation for further exploring the mechanism of transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation in regulating brain memory function.