Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation can disrupt or reestablish neural entrainment in a primate model of Parkinson's disease

Abstract

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation method which can affect brain oscillations by inducing neuronal entrainment through modulation of spike timings. tACS has high potential for clinical applications in many neurological disorders in which the stimulation can be delivered to modulate oscillatory activity and disrupt pathological brain oscillations. For instance, in Parkinsons Disease (PD), electrophysiological activity in the motor network often exhibits excessive and hyper-synchronized beta oscillations. However, the development of tACS as a therapeutic intervention for pathological oscillations requires the prior establishment of physiologically effective stimulation parameters. We recorded neuronal activity in the motor cortical area of three parkinsonian non-human primates and examined the influence of tACS-induced electric fields on neural firing patterns. We found that weak extracellular electric fields first disrupt beta-band spike timing patterns by changing the preferred spiking phase of neurons but eventually reestablish neural entrainment with altered phase preferences when electric fields are high. Additionally, we show that frequency-matched stimulation, when stimulation frequency corresponds to endogenous oscillatory activity, significantly enhances neural entrainment. Thus, tACS exhibits significant potential for controlling and modulating pathological oscillatory patterns in many neurological disorders such as PD.