In Vivo Neuroelectrophysiological Monitoring of Atomically Precise Au Clusters at an Ultrahigh Injected Dose.

Atomically precise Au(SG) clusters have shown great promise in near-infrared II cerebrovascular imaging, X-ray imaging, and cancer radiotherapy due to their high atomic number, unique molecular-like electronic structure, and renal clearable properties. Therefore, it is important to study the in vivo toxicity of Au clusters. Unfortunately, previous toxicological investigations focused on low injected doses (<100 mg kg) and routine research methods, such as blood chemistry and biochemistry, which cannot reflect neurotoxicity or tiny changes in neural activity. In this work, in vivo neuroelectrophysiology of Au clusters at ultrahigh injected doses (200, 300, and 500 mg kg) was investigated. Local field potential showed that the Au-treated mice showed a spike in delta rhythm and moved to lower frequency over time. The power spectrum showed a 38.3% reduction in the peak value at 10 h post-injection of Au clusters compared with 3 h post-injection, which gradually became close to the normal level, indicating no permanent damage to the nervous system. Moreover, no significant structural changes were found in both neurons and glial cells at the histological level. These results of in vivo neuroelectrophysiology will encourage scientists to make more exciting discoveries on nervous system diseases by employing Au clusters even at ultrahigh injected doses.