MnDRIVE Neuromodulation fellow, Dr. Ivan Alekseichuk won the main poster award at the Brainbox Initiative Conference 2020 for his latest work in "Dose-dependent effects of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) on spike timing in awake nonhuman primates."
TACS promises vast advances in mental health due to its hypothesized ability to entrain brain activity in the form of neural spiking and brain oscillations with a great phase and frequency precision. This work further scrutinized the neural level mechanisms of tACS using cutting edge analyses in awake primates and, for the first time, defined clear dose-dependent mechanisms of action. Dr. Alekseichuk presented evidence that low-intensity tACS induces sufficient intracranial electric fields to drive the spike-timing of neocortical neurons in a phase-specific manner (Figure 1). Besides, the second mechanism of action was identified, which is a change in neural patterns of communications (increased burstiness). Present findings reinforce the applications of tACS in precision medicine. The research became possible thanks to the support of the University of Minnesota's MnDrive Initiative and National Institute of Health (NIH) and interdisciplinary collaboration at the University, featuring Prof. Luke Johnson (Dept. of Neurology), Prof. Matthew Johnson (Dept. of Biomedical Engineering), and Prof. Alexander Opitz (Dept. of Biomedical Engineering).
Related publications: 1. Alekseichuk et al., Nature Communications, 2019 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10581-7); 2. Johnson and Alekseichuk et al., Science Advances, 2020 (https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eaaz2747).
Illustration of the main findings. Top row, experimental set-up included non-invasive brain stimulation (TACS), invasive neurophysiological recordings in primates, and the induced electric fields' recordings. Bottom row, dose-dependent changes in neural s