Entrainment effects upon synaptically connected microcircuit in transcranial alternating current stimulation

Kyeongseop Park, Hyeyeon Chung, Cheolki Im, Sung Chan Jun

Abstract: Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) has garnered attention as a popular neuromodulation method for clinical applications. However, neurons' responses to tACS are uncertain and controversy remains whether tACS can entrain neural activity or not. To resolve this controversy, we constructed a realistic cortical microcircuit from validated experimental data to investigate tACS's effects on neural entrainment. We analyzed the firing rate and neural synchronization in response to 10Hz tACS for models with/without synaptic connections. Consequently, we observed that our results were consistent with in vivo experimental data and that synaptic connections influence neural entrainment's effects. Clinical Relevance-This finding may help us to have a better understanding of the tACS mechanism with respect to neural entrainment. Moreover the realistic microcircuit model may help predict the neural responses to tACS in clinical applications

External IDs:dblp:conf/ner/ParkCIJ23