2024/06/05 by Soo Yeun Lee, Konstantinos Kozalakis, Fahimeh Baftizadeh +4 · 2 voices · 1 citation
Engineering · Neuroscience · #Advanced Memory and Neural Computing #Neural dynamics and brain function #Neuroscience and Neural Engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2024.05.009
openalex publication_date 2024/06/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Electric fields affect the activity of neurons and brain circuits, yet how this happens at the cellular level remains enigmatic. Lack of understanding of how to stimulate the brain to promote or suppress specific activity significantly limits basic research and clinical applications. Here, we study how electric fields impact subthreshold and spiking properties of major cortical neuronal classes. We find that neurons in the rodent and human cortex exhibit strong, cell-class-dependent entrainment that depends on stimulation frequency. Excitatory pyramidal neurons, with their slower spike rate, entrain to both slow and fast electric fields, while inhibitory classes like Pvalb and Sst (with their fast spiking) predominantly phase-lock to fast fields. We show that this spike-field entrainment is the result of two effects: non-specific membrane polarization occurring across classes and class-specific excitability properties. Importantly, these properties are present across cortical areas and species. These findings allow for the design of selective and class-specific neuromodulation.