Infrared neural stimulation (INS) has been used in the past to evoke neural activity from hearing and partially deaf animals. All the responses were excitatory. In Aplysia californica, Duke and coworkers demonstrated that INS also inhibits neural responses [1], which similar observations were made in the vestibular system [2, 3]. In deaf white cats that have cochleae with largely reduced spiral ganglion neuron counts and a significant degeneration of the organ of Corti, no cochlear compound action potentials could be observed during INS alone. However, the combined electrical and optical stimulation demonstrated inhibitory responses during irradiation with infrared light.

Date Published: 20 March 2014
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8928, Optical Techniques in Neurosurgery, Neurophotonics, and Optogenetics, 892818 (20 March 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2049322

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8928:
Optical Techniques in Neurosurgery, Neurophotonics, and Optogenetics
Henry Hirschberg M.D.; E. Duco Jansen; Samarendra K. Mohanty; Nitish V. Thakor; Qingming Luo; Steen J. Madsen, Editor(s)