Ultrasound Can Control Brain Cells Wirelessly, No Implants Required

Scientists have discovered a way to activate mammalian cells just through ultrasound. In this way, deep brain stimulation can be achieved even without implants and wires. 

This gives hope for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder that impedes the mobility of a sufferer, gradually making everyday movement more challenging. 

Currently, one form of treatment is deep brain stimulation—a method of producing counter impulses to regulate abnormal impulses the disease causes, as detailed by BioTechniques. However, this requires implanting a device into the brain to induce artificial electric impulses. 

“Going wireless is the future for just about everything,” Sreekanth Chalasani, an associate professor in Salk Institute’s Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory and one of the researchers working on this project, states in a press release.

The method of using ultrasonic waves to stimulate groups of genetically marked cells is known as “sonogenetics,” a term coined by Chalasani himself almost a full decade ago. 

In recent research, the team found TRPA1, a channel protein that was previously known to let cells respond to noxious compounds and to activate a range of human cells, including those in the brain and heart. This channel, they realized, also opened in response to ultrasound in a common human research cell line (HEK).

A gene therapy approach was used to experiment further, adding the genes for the human protein TRPA1 to a group of neurons in mice brains. With ultrasound, it was shown that only the neurons with the TRPA1 genes were activated. 

This research was published in the journal Nature Communications earlier this month. 

With more research, sonogenetics could eventually bypass the blood-brain barrier to be able to treat Parkinson’s despite replacing implants in the brain entirely. 

“In order to make this finding more useful for future research and clinical applications, we hope to determine exactly what parts of TRPA1 contribute to its ultrasound sensitivity and tweak them to enhance this sensitivity,” Corinne Lee-Kubli, a co-first author of the paper, explains of the team’s current endeavors.

Apart from Parkinson’s, other diseases affecting mobility—like epilepsy and dyskinesia—can be treated with sonogenetics by allowing doctors to activate brain cells at a specific position even without surgery.

Additionally, sonogenetics could also be used to activate cells in the heart, similar to a pacemaker.

[via BioTechniques and Medical Xpress, image via Shutterstock]