• Leonardo Remedios, Pedro Mabil, Jorge Flores-Hernández, Oswaldo Torres-Ramírez, Nayeli Huidobro, Gerardo Castro, Lucia Cervantes, Jesus A Tapia, Braniff De la Torre Valdovinos, and Elias Manjarrez.
• Facultad de Cs. Físico-Matemáticas, Av. San Claudio y 18 sur, Ciudad Universitaria, CP 72570, Puebla, Pue., Mexico.
• Neuroscience. 2019 Apr 15; 404: 371-386.

AbstractTranscranial random noise electrical stimulation (tRNS) of the human brain is a non-invasive technique that can be employed to increase the excitability of the cerebral cortex; however, the physiological mechanisms remain unclear. Here we report for the first time the effects of short-term (250 ms) random noise electrical stimulation (RNS) on in-vitro acutely-isolated brain pyramidal neurons from the somatosensory and auditory cerebral cortex. We analyzed the correlation between the peak amplitude of the Na+ current and its latency for different levels of RNS. We found three groups of neurons. The first group exhibited a positive correlation, the second, a negative correlation, and the third group of neurons did not exhibit correlation. In the first group, both the peak amplitude of a TTX-sensitive Na+ current and its inverse of latency followed similar inverted U-like functions relative to the electrical RNS level. In this group, the RNS levels in which the maximal values of the inverted U-like functions occurred were the same. In the second group, the maximal values of the inverted U-like functions occurred at different levels. In the third group, only the peak amplitude of the Na+ current exhibited a clear inverted U-like function, but the inverse of the latency versus the electrical RNS, did not exhibit a clear inverted U-like function. A Hodgkin-Huxley neuron model reproduces our experimental results and shows that the observed behavior in the Na+ current could be due to the impact of RNS on the kinetics of activation and inactivation of the Na+ channels.Copyright © 2019 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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