The Response of Prefrontal and Parietal Lobes to Acoustoelectric Signal

Acoustoelectric brain imaging (ABI), a high spatiotemporal resolution neural imaging method, has been achieved in living rats. Based on the coupling of acoustic field and electric field, acoustoelectric (AE) signal can be generated within the focal zone of focused ultrasound (FUS) and AE signal is the foundation of the ABI. Although experiment results reveal AE signal could be detected in the non-focal brain regions, the response of different non-focal regions to AE signal remains unclear. In this study, applying FUS and visual stimulus to living rat, the AE signal and stable state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) signal were simultaneously collected in the prefrontal and parietal lobe. For decoded-AE signal and SSVEP, the consistent spectra with obvious amplitude response at 8Hz were observed. Then, the amplitude and energy of the AE signal on different brain cortex were compared. We found that the intensity of AE signal on the contralateral side of the FUS focuses was stronger than that on the ipsilateral side. And compared to the parietal lobe, the prefrontal lobe had a stronger response to AE signal. Experiment results validate that the conduction of AE signal is not only due to the volume conductor effect in the brain. Moreover, the further away from the source, the stronger the response of AE signal was. This study may provide a prospect for the processing mechanism of AE signal.