ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Synaptic Neurosci.
Volume 17 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnsyn.2025.1621352
This article is part of the Research TopicStimulation Strategies Targeting Plasticity Mechanisms in Diseased Brain NetworksView all 8 articles
Morphological variability may limit single-cell specificity to electric field stimulation
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
- 2Krembil Brain Institute, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada
- 3Team MIMESIS, INRIA, UMR7357 CNRS, ICube Research Department, Strasbourg, France
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Non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, widely used to manipulate neural excitability and behaviour, are well studied at the meso-and macroscopic scales. However, less is known about their specificity at the level of individual cells. Here, using models based on real pyramidal and parvalbumin neuron morphologies created by the Allen Institute for Brain Science, we explored single-cell variability and evoked response susceptibility to uniform electric fields. We devised metrics quantifying various aspects of cellular morphology, ranging from whole cell attributes to net compartment length, branching, diameter to orientation. No physical traits yielded layer-or cell-type-specific responses passing statistical significance tests. While electric fields reliably modulated somatic, dendritic and axonal compartments, and subtype-specific responses were observed, specificity was blurred by the variability in cellular morphology. These null results suggest morphology alone may not account for the reported subtype specificity to electric field stimulation, and question the extent to which non-invasive techniques can control specific components of neural circuitry.
Keywords: Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS), transcranial electric stimulation, computational modeling, Single neuron model, Uniform electric field
Received: 30 Apr 2025; Accepted: 16 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Trotter, Pariz, Hutt and Lefebvre. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Daniel James Trotter, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
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