High-Performance Magnetic-core Coils for Targeted Rodent Brain Stimulations

Objective and Impact Statement.There is a need to develop rodent coils capable of targeted brain stimulation for treating neuropsychiatric disorders and understanding brain mechanisms.We describe a novel rodent coil design to improve the focality for targeted stimulations in small rodent brains.Introduction.Transcranial magnetic stimulation(TMS)is becoming increasingly important for treating neuropsychiatric disorders and understanding brain mechanisms.Preclinical studies permit invasive manipulations and are essential for the mechanistic understanding of TMS effects and explorations of therapeutic outcomes in disease models.However,existing TMS tools lack focality for targeted stimulations.Notably,there has been limited fundamental research on developing coils capable of focal stimulation at deep brain regions on small animals like rodents.Methods.In this study,ferromagnetic cores are added to a novel angle-tuned coil design to enhance the coil performance regarding penetration depth and focality.Numerical simulations and experimental electric field measurements were conducted to optimize the coil design.Results.The proposed coil system demonstrated a significantly smaller stimulation spot size and enhanced electric field decay rate in comparison to existing coils.Adding the ferromagnetic core reduces the energy requirements up to 60%for rodent brain stimulation.The simulated results are validated with experimental measurements and demonstration of suprathreshold rodent limb excitation through targeted motor cortex activation.Conclusion.The newly developed coils are suitable tools for focal stimulations of the rodent brain due to their smaller stimulation spot size and improved electric field decay rate.

Electricity Derived from Plants

The phenomenon of electrical potential differences along the plant apoplast has been reported for more than a century. Earlier works of harvesting energy from trees reported nW range of power with a few hundred-mV open circuit voltage and near uA range short circuit current. In this work, we show that if we cut a stem into pieces, each segment would maintain nearly the same open circuit voltage and short circuit current regardless of length. Using a pico-ampere meter, we also found that the living cells in the vascular cambial and secondary xylem and phloem tissues are the source of electricity. They provide a relatively constant voltage and current to external environment for reasons still under investigation. We demonstrate that by cascading separated stems we can accumulate up to 2 V of open circuit voltage. We also demonstrate by connecting them in parallel we can increase the short circuit current.

Power Delivery Studies of Windbelt Generators with Different Architectures

Windbelt generators have been proposed as small, green power sources for battery charging applications. Some of the reported results lack detailed information about how key parameters influence the output power of the generator. In this work, we built prototypes with different architectures to study the voltage generation and power delivery as functions of belt tension, length, and electrical load at various wind speeds. We also studied the maximum power delivery conditions before the breakdown of the belt oscillation occurs. Our results are obtained from windbelt generators with two types of architectures： a conventional design with an adjustable belt that uses weight for tension control, and a revised design with a belt oscillation perpendicular to the coil axis. We have concluded that the breakdown of the belt oscillation at lower output resistances is a primary bottleneck that will limit windbelt systems to only very low power applications.