Transcranial ultrasound stimulation: a possible therapeutic approach to epilepsy

Epilepsy threatens the health of more than 50 million people all over the world. Many patients with epilepsy, especially temporal lobe epilepsy, are resistant to the current therapeutic drugs. Different strategies for these patients are therefore necessary to achieve maximum therapeutic effect. Neuromodulation techniques have gained widespread attention due to their therapeutic utility in managing numerous neurological/psychiatric diseases. Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) is an emerging non-invasive neurostimulation tool that can both excite and reversibly suppress neuronal activity effectively within the brain. TUS can transmit through the skull with millimeter spatial resolutions. In the current work, we propose that TUS may be a promising alternative therapy for the suppression of seizure activity in epilepsy patients, minimizing poor post-seizure outcomes and improving life quality. Further investigation into stimulation parameters, including waveform parameters such as tone burst duration (pulse length), pulse repetition frequency, exposure time, acoustic frequency, and the acoustic intensity of TUS, is needed to verify the efficacy of this intervention in epilepsy.