Understanding the physiology and pathology of neural circuits is crucial in neuroscience research. A variety of techniques have been utilized in medical research, with several established methods applied in clinical therapy to enhance patient' neurological functions. Traditional methods include generating electric fields near neural tissue using electrodes, or non-contact modulation using light, chemicals, magnetic fields, and ultrasound. The advent of nanotechnology represents a new advancement in neural modulation techniques, offering high precision and the ability to target specific cell types. Smart nanomaterials enable the conversion of remote signals (such as light, magnetic, or ultrasound) into local stimuli (eg, electric fields or heat) for neurons. Surface treatment technologies of nanomaterials have enhanced biocompatibility, making targeted delivery to specific cell types possible and paving the way for precise neural modulation. This perspective will explore neural modulation techniques supported by nanomedical materials, focusing on photoelectric, photothermal, magnetoelectric, magnetothermal, and acoustoelectric conversion mechanisms, and looking forward to their medical applications.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/IJN.S491440 | DOI Listing |
Commun Biol
January 2025
Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Human behavior is strongly influenced by anticipation, but the underlying neural mechanisms are poorly understood. We obtained intracranial electrocephalography (iEEG) measurements in neurosurgical patients as they performed a simple sensory-motor task with variable (short or long) foreperiod delays that affected anticipation of the cue to respond. Participants showed two forms of anticipatory response biases, distinguished by more premature false alarms (FAs) or faster response times (RTs) on long-delay trials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrain Res
January 2025
Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada; Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute Edmonton Alberta Canada; Canada Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) AI Chair, Canada.
Humans are excellent at modifying our behaviour depending on context. For example, humans will change how they explore when losses are possible compared to when they are not possible. However, it remains unclear what specific cognitive and neural processes are modulated when exploring in different contexts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConscious Cogn
January 2025
Humane Technology Lab, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy; Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab., Istituto Auxologico Italiano IRCCS, Milan, Italy. Electronic address:
Psychedelic drugs offer valuable insights into consciousness, but disentangling their causal effects on perceptual and high-level cognition is nontrivial. Technological advances in virtual reality (VR) and machine learning have enabled the immersive simulation of visual hallucinations. However, comprehensive experimental data on how these simulated hallucinations affects high-level human cognition is lacking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPharmaceuticals (Basel)
January 2025
Department of Translational Research and New Surgical and Medical Technologies in Medicine and Surgery, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy.
Psychedelics, historically celebrated for their cultural and spiritual significance, have emerged as potential breakthrough therapeutic agents due to their profound effects on consciousness, emotional processing, mood, and neural plasticity. This review explores the mechanisms underlying psychedelics' effects, focusing on their ability to modulate brain connectivity and neural circuit activity, including the default mode network (DMN), cortico-striatal thalamo-cortical (CSTC) loops, and the relaxed beliefs under psychedelics (REBUS) model. Advanced neuroimaging techniques reveal psychedelics' capacity to enhance functional connectivity between sensory cerebral areas while reducing the connections between associative brain areas, decreasing the rigidity and rendering the brain more plastic and susceptible to external changings, offering insights into their therapeutic outcome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Mol Sci
January 2025
Department of Neurology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China.
Spinal cord injury (SCI) can lead to devastating dysfunctions and complications, significantly impacting patients' quality of life and aggravating the burden of disease. Since the main pathological mechanism of SCI is the disruption of neuronal circuits, the primary therapeutic strategy for SCI involves reconstructing and activating circuits to restore neural signal transmission. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a noninvasive brain stimulation technique, can modulate the function or state of the nervous system by pulsed magnetic fields.
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