Trends in Cognitive Sciences
OpinionRe-establishing the merits of electrical brain stimulation
Section snippets
Merit of electrical brain stimulation: a long-standing controversy
Approximately 150 years ago Fritsch and Hitzig discovered that direct electrical stimulation (DES) of the cerebral cortex of dogs evokes localized, topographically organized muscle contractions in the contralateral hemibody [1]. This discovery led several researchers to use electrical stimulation to probe the anatomic and functional organization of the brain 2, 3. David Ferrier was perhaps one of the most famous. Using DES in various animal species, he reported that complex, ethologically
DES and the sensorimotor system
In humans, several motor-related cortical areas (designated ‘motor areas’ hereafter) have been shown to evoke movements when electrically stimulated [5], including the primary motor cortex (M1) [16], the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) [17], the premotor cortex (PMC) [6], the supplementary motor area (SMA) [18], and the cingulate cortex (CC) [19]. Interestingly, these areas are widely interconnected with each other and they all have direct efferent projections to the spinal cord 20, 21, 22, 23
DES and cognitive functions
Although most authors agree that DES is a unique tool for identifying causal links between neural processes and specific cognitive functions 29, 43, 52, 53, 54, detractors of this technique assert that the propensity of electrical current to spread in a random, unpredictable manner within brain networks precludes every possibility of causal reasoning 13, 14. This criticism is mainly based on the claim that stimulation outcomes are dramatically variable and heterogeneous. In support of this
DES and clinical mapping
Probably the most direct and convincing evidence that DES has specific, highly reliable effects comes from the successful use of this technique during functional perioperative mapping in human patients with brain tumors. Since the pioneering work of Penfield and Boldrey, DES has proved highly efficient for identifying eloquent regions related to motor and cognitive functions 5, 53, 76, 77, which allows the dramatic reduction in the occurrence of permanent postoperative sequelae in the patients
Concluding remarks
To summarize, it appears that, during the past century, DES has provided a unique body of knowledge about the anatomo-functional organization of the brain 29, 43, 52, 53, 54, 58. However, despite this extremely valuable contribution, the same criticisms keep appearing in the literature to challenge the relevance and reliability of DES results (Box 3). The evidence reviewed in this paper shows that these ritualistic, knee-jerk criticisms are no longer tenable when the actual scientific
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by CNRS, the ‘Cortex’ Labex Program, and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-11BSV40271; ANR-12-BSV4-0018-01) to A.S. and M.D.
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2021, NeuroImageCitation Excerpt :However, chemogenetics has not been combined with fUS to date. Direct electrical stimulation is another way to efficiently evoke transient activity with high temporal precision when genetic cell targeting is not essential (Desmurget et al., 2013). Electrical stimulation can be combined with fUS, as shown in a study that stimulated the frontal cortex of ferrets while recording from the auditory cortex to study the top-down modulation of auditory areas (Bimbard et al., 2018).
Functional organization of the human primary somatosensory cortex: A stereo-electroencephalography study
2021, Clinical NeurophysiologyCitation Excerpt :However, the depth of the central sulcus is approximately twice the width of the postcentral gyrus (Woolsey, 1979), which means that the major component of S1 is the sulcal cortex, including BA3 and BA2. Although recent functional imaging studies (Akselrod et al., 2017; Kurth et al., 2000, 1998; Martuzzi et al., 2014; Pfannmoller et al., 2016) have made relevant contributions to the functional investigation of the folded cortex, it is yet less superior to arbitrarily explored a specific area of the brain than DES (Desmurget et al., 2013). Different from previous studies, we first utilized SEEG technology and DES to explore the functional organization of the entire S1.
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