Optical neural stimulation modeling on degenerative neocortical neural networks

Abstract

Neurodegenerative diseases usually appear at advanced age. Medical advances make people live longer and as a consequence, the number of neurodegenerative diseases continuously grows. There is still no cure for these diseases, but several brain stimulation techniques have been proposed to improve patients’ condition. One of them is Optical Neural Stimulation (ONS), which is based on the application of optical radiation over specific brain regions. The outer cerebral zones can be noninvasively stimulated, without the common drawbacks associated to surgical procedures. This work focuses on the analysis of ONS effects in stimulated neurons to determine their influence in neuronal activity. For this purpose a neural network model has been employed. The results show the neural network behavior when the stimulation is provided by means of different optical radiation sources and constitute a first approach to adjust the optical light source parameters to stimulate specific neocortical areas.