Low-intensity transcranial ultrasound stimulation modulates neural activities in mice under propofol anaesthesia

Previous studies have reported that transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation can significantly decrease the time to emergence from intraperitoneal ketamine-xylazine anaesthesia in rats. However, how transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation modulates neural activity in anaesthetized rats is unclear.

In this study, to answer this question, we used low-intensity transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) to stimulate the brain tissue of propofol-anaesthetized mice, recorded local field potentials (LFPs) in the mouse motor cortex and electromyography (EMG) signals from the mouse neck, and analysed the emergence and recovery time, mean absolute power, relative power and entropy of local field potentials.

We found that the time to emergence from anaesthesia in the TUS group (20.3 ± 1.7 min) was significantly less than that in the Sham group (32 ± 2.6 min). We also found that compared with the Sham group, 20 min after low-intensity TUS during recovery from anaesthesia, (1) the absolute power of local field potentials in mice was significantly reduced in the [1-4 Hz] and [13-30 Hz] frequency bands and significantly increased in the [55-100 Hz], [100-140 Hz] and [140-200 Hz] frequency bands; (2) the relative power of local field potentials in mice was enhanced at [30-45 Hz], [100-140 Hz] and [140-200 Hz] frequency bands; (3) the entropy of local field potentials ([1-200 Hz]) was increased.

These results demonstrate that low-intensity TUS can effectively modulate neural activities in both awake and anaesthetized mice and has a positive effect on recovery from propofol anaesthesia in mice.