Can Acoustic Radiation Pressure be Responsible for Ultrasonic Neuromodulation Effect?

The past years show tremendous progress in the exciting field of ultrasonic neuromodulation, when more and more experimental studies spanning from rodents to humans joint to map the effective parameters for noninvasive ultrasound-induced neural activity suppression and excitation. Despite this, the underlying mechanism is not clear and several hypotheses were introduced, when cell membrane capacitance variations aroused by acoustic radiation pressure (ARP) and intramembrane cavitation phenomena constitute the leading mechanisms. In this study we present a detailed ARP-based theoretical analysis that predicts and dissects bilayer membrane experimental dynamics and determines that ARP unable to change sufficiently the neural cells membrane capacitance to stimulate isolated or network associated cortical neurons. As our previous studies have already presented the neuronal intramembrane cavitation excitation (NICE) theory to elucidate and forecast the entire ultrasonic neuromodulation effect, the present study only strengthens the NICE hypothesis.