Transcranial ultrasound stimulation selectively enhances fronto-temporal context-guided memory

Benjamin Slater; Hugo Caffaratti; Timothy Griffiths; Jérôme Sallet; Patrick Degenaar; Marcus Kaiser; Alexander Easton; Yukiko Kikuchi; Christopher Petkov

doi:10.64898/2025.12.19.695543

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Transcranial ultrasound stimulation selectively enhances fronto-temporal context-guided memory

Preprint

Open access

Transcranial ultrasound stimulation selectively enhances fronto-temporal context-guided memory

Benjamin Slater, Hugo Caffaratti, Timothy Griffiths, Jérôme Sallet, Patrick Degenaar, Marcus Kaiser, Alexander Easton, Yukiko Kikuchi and Christopher Petkov

bioRxiv

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

12/22/2025

DOI: 10.64898/2025.12.19.695543

PMCID: PMC12776154

PMID: 41509272

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https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.19.695543View

Preprint (Author's original)This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

Abstract

There is substantial scientific interest in improving approaches that can enhance cognition through brain stimulation. We implemented a non-invasive focal Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation (TUS) approach with known longer-lasting post-stimulation effects in two rhesus macaques performing a context-dependent memory-sequencing task implemented on multiple touchscreens within their home units. Consistently in both monkeys, TUS to the anterior - but not posterior - medial temporal lobe enhanced performance under stable memory-sequencing contexts. TUS to the medial prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, selectively improved performance when contexts were unstable and the monkey needed to adapt to both a change in context and temporal sequence. These findings shed new light on fronto-temporal nodes that, when perturbed, can selectively enhance cognitive performance, paving the way for further developing non-invasive approaches to improve cognitive function in humans and to study neural circuits under focal perturbation across species.

Details

Title: Subtitle: Transcranial ultrasound stimulation selectively enhances fronto-temporal context-guided memory
Creators: Benjamin Slater - Newcastle University
Hugo Caffaratti - University of Iowa
Timothy Griffiths - Newcastle University
Jérôme Sallet - University of Oxford
Patrick Degenaar - Newcastle University
Marcus Kaiser - University of Nottingham
Alexander Easton
Yukiko Kikuchi - Newcastle University
Christopher Petkov - University of Iowa
Resource Type: Preprint
Publication Details: bioRxiv
DOI: 10.64898/2025.12.19.695543
PMID: 41509272
PMCID: PMC12776154
NLM abbreviation: bioRxiv
ISSN: 2692-8205
eISSN: 2692-8205
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; United States
Language: English
Date posted: 12/22/2025
Academic Unit: Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Neurosurgery; Otolaryngology
Record Identifier: 9985116068702771

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