Ultrasound is associated with reduced cortical atrophy in...
Nicholas Fabiano, MD@NTFabiano
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Mar 20, 2025
~1 min read
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Ultrasound is associated with reduced cortical atrophy in Alzheimer's dementia.
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These findings are from a study in @alzassociation which performed a pre-/post transcranial pulse stimulation (TPS) analysis of cortical thickness in a group of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tr… 2/9
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In pathological brains, in which tissue conductivity can be profoundly altered, electromagnetic methods of transcranial non-invasive brain stimulation (such as transcranial magnetic- and direct current stimulation, TMS and tDCS) are difficult to target. 3/9
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In contrast, ultrasound stimulation can be targeted exactly in such cases, because ultrasound does not depend on intracerebral conductivities; ultrasound stimulation and TPS allow stimulation of deep subcortical areas. 4/9
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In this study, there was a significant correlation between neuropsychological improvement and cortical thickness increase in AD-critical brain areas. 5/9
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This was found in a set of regions known to be particularly important for AD patients' cognitive functioning—the default mode network. 6/9
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This network is important for cognitive and memory performance and degenerates very early in the course of AD. 7/9
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These data confirm expectations that therapeutic ultrasound may not only have functional effects—something demonstrated in a large variety of animal and human studies—but may also reduce atrophy of brain tissue that is treated with TPS. 8/9
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Overall, available evidence indicates that therapeutic ultrasound with TPS may indeed be effective as a new add-on therapy for AD and possibly for other neurodegenerative diseases. 9/9
