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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
url
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.

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