Personalized temporal interference stimulation targeting striatum reduces functional stability and dynamic...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Neuromodulation
• Brain Network Dynamics

Background:

• Functional stability in sensorimotor networks (SMN) is vital for motor control.
• Temporal Interference (TI) stimulation is a non-invasive technique for modulating deep brain structures like the striatum.
• The effect of TI stimulation on dynamic functional stability in motor networks is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of TI stimulation on the functional stability and dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) of the sensorimotor network.
• To assess the safety and tolerability of TI stimulation targeting the striatum.

Main Methods:

• A double-blind, randomized controlled trial with 26 healthy males compared TI stimulation to sham stimulation.
• Resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) was used to measure brain activity before and during stimulation.
• Dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) and voxel-wise functional stability were analyzed using sliding-window approaches and Kendall's concordance coefficient.

Main Results:

• TI stimulation significantly decreased functional stability in bilateral supplementary motor area (SMA) regions compared to sham and baseline.
• TI stimulation reduced dFC variability between the right striatum and the left SMA.
• The procedure was safe, with no reported adverse cognitive or side effects and effective blinding.

Conclusions:

• TI stimulation targeting the striatum effectively modulates SMN stability and cortico-striatal pathway dFC variability.
• This non-invasive neuromodulation technique holds potential for treating motor network disorders.
• Further research is warranted to explore its therapeutic applications.