BACKGROUND The stimulation of nerve or cortical tissue by magnetic induction is a relatively new tool for the non-invasive study of the brain and nervous system. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), for example, has been used for the functional mapping of the motor cortex and may have potential for treating a variety of brain disorders. METHODS AND RESULTS A new method of stimulating acti...

To investigate neural adaptive properties, near-field evoked potentials were recorded from a chronically implanted electrode in the ventral cochlear nucleus in awake Long-Evans rats exposed to acoustic stimuli or receiving intracochlear electric stimulation. Stimuli were 250-ms trains of repetitive acoustic clicks (10, 30 and 50 dB SPL) or biphasic electric pulses (30, 50 and 70 microA) with in...

Electric fields can stimulate excitable tissue by a number of mechanisms. A uniform long, straight peripheral axon is activated by the gradient of the electric field that is oriented parallel to the fiber axis. Cortical neurons in the brain are excited when the electric field, which is applied along the axon-dendrite axis, reaches a particular threshold value. Cardiac tissue is thought to be de...

OBJECTIVE Our aim was to explore the consequences for speech understanding of leaving a gap in frequency between a region of acoustic hearing and a region stimulated electrically. Our studies were conducted with normal-hearing listeners, using an acoustic simulation of combined electric and acoustic (EAS) stimulation. DESIGN Simulations of EAS were created by low-pass filtering speech at 0.5 ...

The green microalga Haematococcus pluvialis accumulates astaxanthin, a potent antioxidant pigment, as defense mechanism against environmental stresses. In this study, we investigated the technical feasibility of stress-based method for inducing astaxanthin biosynthesis in H. using electric stimulation two-chamber bioelectrochemical system. When cathodic (reduction) current 3 mA (voltage: 2 V) w...