Effects of electrical and optogenetic deep brain stimulation on synchronized oscillatory activity in Parkinsonian basal ganglia

TL;DR

This study compares electrical and optogenetic deep brain stimulation in Parkinsonian models, finding optogenetics more effective in suppressing pathological neural oscillations, suggesting potential for improved therapies.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of electrical and optogenetic stimulation effects on Parkinsonian neural activity, highlighting the superior efficacy of optogenetics in disrupting pathological rhythms.

Findings

Optogenetic stimulation more effectively suppresses Parkinsonian neural oscillations.

Different stimulation types interact uniquely with network dynamics.

Network responses vary with stimulation parameters.

Abstract

Conventional deep brain stimulation (DBS) of basal ganglia uses high-frequency regular electrical pulses to treat Parkinsonian motor symptoms and has a series of limitations. Relatively new and not yet clinically tested optogenetic stimulation is an effective experimental stimulation technique to affect pathological network dynamics. We compared the effects of electrical and optogenetic stimulation of the basal ganglia on the pathological parkinsonian rhythmic neural activity. We studied the network response to electrical stimulation and excitatory and inhibitory optogenetic stimulations. Different stimulations exhibit different interactions with pathological activity in the network. We studied these interactions for different network and stimulation parameter values. Optogenetic stimulation was found to be more efficient than electrical stimulation in suppressing pathological rhythmicity. Our findings indicate that optogenetic control of neural synchrony may be more efficacious than electrical control because of the different ways of how stimulations interact with network dynamics.