Novel Broadband Acoustic Neuronal Cell Stimulator for High Throughput Cell Investigation

Ultrasound brain stimulation recently takes a lot of attention for the capability of modulating neuronal activities with mouse or human models. However, fundamental studies in the cellular level have not been performed with in-vitro studies. With the use of conventional focused ultrasound beam, semi-uniform acoustic energy only can be delivered to couple of cells, and unexpected artifacts such as shear waves and reverberations would cause additional neuronal responses which need to be avoided. In this paper, a novel high throughput coverslip based transducer was developed, and astrocytes were directly cultured on the surface of transducer to deliver the uniform acoustic energy to the group of cultured cells. Fluorescence calcium responses from the group of astrocytes could be measured. Astrocyte showed suppressive responses to the acoustic stimulations, and absolute peak amplitude of the calcium response was generally increased as the acoustic stimulation frequencies decreased.