Behavioral effects of targeting the central thalamus and pulvinar with transcranial ultrasound stimulation in healthy volunteers

Abstract

We present the first causal evidence in the healthy human brain linking the central thalamus to vigilance and the pulvinar to visuospatial attention using low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation (tFUS). In a within-subjects, counterbalanced design, 27 healthy volunteers completed the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), a vigilance task, and the Egly-Driver Task (EDT), which assesses visuospatial attention, before and after central thalamus, pulvinar, and sham sonication with tFUS. Central thalamic sonication significantly impaired performance on both tasks in a manner consistent with decreases in arousal. Targeting the pulvinar with tFUS resulted in more subtle changes in visuospatial attention. Participants were less reactive to visual stimuli presented in the visual field contralateral to the affected pulvinar. These results demonstrate that tFUS can elicit measurable behavioral changes in healthy volunteers and underscores its potential as a high-resolution tool for non-invasive brain mapping, capable of differentiating functional contributions of thalamic regions only millimeters apart.