Transcranial ultrasound stimulation selectively enhances fronto-temporal context-guided memory.
Slater B., Caffaratti H., Griffiths T., Sallet J., Degenaar P., Kaiser M., Easton A., Kikuchi Y., Petkov C.
There is substantial scientific interest in improving approaches that can enhance cognition through brain stimulation. We implemented a non-invasive focal Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation (TUS) approach with known longer-lasting post-stimulation effects in two rhesus macaques performing a context-dependent memory-sequencing task implemented on multiple touchscreens within their home units. Consistently in both monkeys, TUS to the anterior - but not posterior - medial temporal lobe enhanced performance under stable memory-sequencing contexts. TUS to the medial prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, selectively improved performance when contexts were unstable and the monkey needed to adapt to both a change in context and temporal sequence. These findings shed new light on fronto-temporal nodes that, when perturbed, can selectively enhance cognitive performance, paving the way for further developing non-invasive approaches to improve cognitive function in humans and to study neural circuits under focal perturbation across species.