NYU Langone-led scientists have developed a way to steer brain activity in mice using precisely targeted radio waves. The approach could one day offer noninvasive treatments for conditions like depression, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.
A new way of using radio waves to tune brain activity in mice could open the door to noninvasive treatments for a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Researchers led by NYU Langone Health have introduced a technique called Transcranial Radio Frequency Stimulation, or TRFS, that uses carefully controlled radio frequency energy to either dial down or boost the firing of specific brain cells. The method, tested in live mice, aims to offer an alternative to brain surgery and to drugs that often lose effectiveness over time.
Senior author György Buzsáki, the Biggs Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Neuroscience at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, noted the work marks a key step for the emerging technology.
“Our study is the first to demonstrate in live mice the potential of the technology to be highly effective for adjusting neural activity,” he said in a news release.
Brain disorders such as depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and anxiety affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Many patients do not respond to medications, or experience serious side effects. Others may be candidates for deep brain stimulation, which requires surgically implanted electrodes, or for noninvasive techniques like transcranial magnetic stimulation, which can struggle to reach deep brain regions or focus on small targets.
Buzsáki underscored the scale of the problem, adding that “The need for better, noninvasive techniques is becoming ever more urgent, with 1 in 3 people globally affected by some form of brain disorder during their lifetime.”
Radio frequency waves are already familiar in medicine. They are used in MRI scanners to help generate detailed images of the body and to heat and destroy cancer cells in some treatments. But until now, they had not been systematically explored as a way to directly modulate brain activity.
The NYU team set out to change that by designing tiny, customized antennas from the tips of coaxial cables. These miniature devices can transmit high-frequency signals into the brain and focus energy on specific deep regions, overcoming some of the limitations of existing noninvasive tools.
When RF energy is delivered this way, it gently heats the targeted brain tissue. Even small temperature changes can alter how easily charged ions flow in and out of neurons, shifting how strongly those cells fire. The researchers built TRFS to operate in two distinct modes, depending on the therapeutic goal.
In what they call the pristine mode, the team applied RF energy to the intact, normal brain without any genetic modifications. Using a light-based recording technique called 1-photon fiber photometry, they monitored how brain cells responded to the local, heat-induced changes.
They found that this approach had a particularly strong effect on inhibitory interneurons. These specialized cells act as the brain’s brakes, shaping the flow of signals through neural circuits and helping control actions, perceptions and thoughts. By raising the temperature of these interneurons within a normal, safe range, RF stimulation produced a dose-dependent suppression of their activity.
That matters because past research has suggested that reducing the activity of certain inhibitory cells can help counter conditions such as depression, chronic pain and anxiety disorders. The new findings suggest TRFS could, in principle, be tuned to selectively quiet these cells without damaging tissue.
The second mode, called RF-genetics mode, combines radio waves with genetic engineering to achieve the opposite effect: boosting neural activity in specific cell types. In this approach, the researchers increased the number of TRPV1 ion channels — sometimes described as molecular thermometers — on the surface of target neurons. These channels make cells more sensitive to heat.
When RF energy was applied to brain regions with extra TRPV1 channels, a modest local temperature rise of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius was enough to trigger a temperature-dependent increase in neural firing. Earlier animal studies have linked increased excitation in particular cell populations to potential benefits for Parkinson’s disease, autism, epilepsy, addiction and other conditions, suggesting one future direction for TRFS.
To show that these changes in brain activity could translate into behavior, the team focused on neurons in the striatum, a deep brain region involved in movement. Certain striatal neurons help control whether an animal turns to the right or left.
By directing RF energy to these cells, the researchers were able to change the direction of rotation in freely moving mice. In pristine mode, mice tended to turn toward the side of the brain that was being stimulated. In RF-genetics mode, they tended to turn away from the stimulated side. The results demonstrate that TRFS can not only modulate neural activity but also steer behavior in a predictable way.
The idea of using radio waves on the brain inevitably raises questions about everyday exposures, such as those from cell phones.
Lead author Omid Yaghmazadeh, a former postdoctoral scholar in the Buzsáki Lab and now an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boise State University, noted that public concern has already driven extensive research in this area.
“Interestingly, the widespread use of cell phones, and fears that they might affect brain function, resulted in a massive body of research literature on the effect of RF energy on the brain,” Yaghmazadeh said in the news release.
He added that this background helped guide the safety parameters for the new technique.
“Our previous work showed that everyday RF doses do not in fact affect neuronal activity, and now we show that higher, yet safe, doses can be harnessed for neuromodulation,” he said.
The current study, published in the journal Brain Stimulation, was conducted in animals, and TRFS is far from ready for clinical use in humans. Many questions remain, including how precisely the energy can be focused through the thicker human skull, how long the effects last, and whether repeated treatments would be safe and effective.
Still, the work points toward a future in which doctors might be able to adjust brain circuits from outside the skull with the turn of a dial, without surgery and with fewer systemic side effects than many drugs. If further research confirms its safety and effectiveness, TRFS could eventually join or even replace existing brain stimulation tools in the clinic.
For now, the NYU team and their collaborators plan to continue refining the technology, exploring how different RF settings affect various cell types and brain regions, and testing whether the approach can improve symptoms in animal models of specific diseases.
As scientists around the world search for better ways to treat brain disorders, the ability to noninvasively tune neural circuits with radio waves offers a striking new possibility — and a reminder that familiar technologies can still hold surprising potential when viewed in a new light.
Source: NYU Langone Health