Utility of red‐light ultrafast optogenetic stimulation of the auditory pathway
Open Access
- 7 May 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in EMBO Molecular Medicine
- Vol. 13 (6), e13391
- https://doi.org/10.15252/emmm.202013391
Abstract
Optogenetic stimulation of spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) in the ear provides a future alternative to electrical stimulation used in current cochlear implants. Here, we employed fast and very fast variants of the red‐light‐activated channelrhodopsin (ChR) Chrimson (f‐Chrimson and vf‐Chrimson) to study their utility for optogenetic stimulation of SGNs in mice. The light requirements were higher for vf‐Chrimson than for f‐Chrimson, even when optimizing membrane expression of vf‐Chrimson by adding potassium channel trafficking sequences. Optogenetic time and intensity coding by single putative SGNs were compared with coding of acoustic clicks. vf‐Chrimson enabled putative SGNs to fire at near‐physiological rates with good temporal precision up to 250 Hz of stimulation. The dynamic range of SGN spike rate coding upon optogenetic stimulation was narrower than for acoustic clicks but larger than reported for electrical stimulation. The dynamic range of spike timing, on the other hand, was more comparable for optogenetic and acoustic stimulation. In conclusion, f‐Chrimson and vf‐Chrimson are promising candidates for optogenetic stimulation of SGNs in auditory research and future cochlear implants.Keywords
This publication has 48 references indexed in Scilit:
- Time course of dynamic range adaptation in the auditory nerveJournal of Neurophysiology, 2012
- Optogenetic therapy for retinitis pigmentosaGene Therapy, 2011
- Spread of cochlear excitation during stimulation with pulsed infrared radiation: inferior colliculus measurementsJournal of Neural Engineering, 2011
- Effect of Stimulation Rate on Cochlear Implant Users’ Phoneme, Word and Sentence Recognition in Quiet and in NoiseAudiology and Neurotology, 2010
- Dynamic Range Adaptation to Sound Level Statistics in the Auditory NerveJournal of Neuroscience, 2009
- Electrical Excitation of the Acoustically Sensitive Auditory Nerve: Single-Fiber Responses to Electric Pulse TrainsJournal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 2006
- Selective Golgi export of Kir2.1 controls the stoichiometry of functional Kir2.x channel heteromersJournal of Cell Science, 2005
- Recombinant adeno-associated virus purification using novel methods improves infectious titer and yieldGene Therapy, 1999
- Electronic design of a cochlear implant for multichannel high-rate pulsatile stimulation strategiesIEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, 1995
- Rate versus level functions for auditory-nerve fibers in cats: tone-burst stimuliThe Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1974