Neural Noise

Functional ultrasound neuroimaging for mesoscopic organization and BCI sensing

2 min read

  • Functional ultrasound (fUS) reveals mesoscopic organization of saccades in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) in a Nature study.1
  • fUS is positioned as an alternative neuroimaging modality with temporal resolution and as a potential BCI/neurotech sensor for circuit-level readouts; tier-2 for methods watchlist.1 1

Gardner updates

  • Non-invasive characterization of pericyte dysfunction in mouse brain using functional ultrasound localization microscopy demonstrates methods relevance for neuroimaging and translational neurotech (Nature) . 2

Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)

  • The primary study (Nature Communications, 2025) used functional ultrasound imaging (fUSI) to map movement-direction encoding across the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) by recording local cerebral blood volume in two male rhesus macaques performing memory-guided saccades.34
  • The lateral intraparietal area (LIP) showed a heterogeneous organization in which small patches of neighboring cortex encoded different saccade directions, with multiple preferred directions coexisting within a single coronal plane.34
  • A rough anterior-posterior topography emerged: anterior LIP had more voxels tuned to contralateral downward saccades and posterior LIP more tuned to contralateral upward saccades.34
  • Direction-tuned subpopulations remained stable across roughly 100-900 days (months to years), a longevity relevant to durable BCI decoders.4
  • The work produced mesoscopic (~100 µm to ~1 mm scale) direction maps that bridge macroscopic fMRI and microscopic electrophysiology, resolution previously unattainable with either modality alone.34
  • fUSI senses slow cerebral blood flow (~1 mm/s) with spatial resolution near 100 µm, temporal resolution under 1 second, and a large, deep field of view (~2 cm), and can image through the dura without penetrating brain tissue.56
  • Prior work by the same Caltech group established single-trial decoding of movement intention from PPC hemodynamics, classifying two directions (left/right), two effectors (hand/eye), and go/no-go task state.7
  • A subsequent closed-loop fUS brain-machine interface used a miniaturized 15.6 MHz, 128-channel linear transducer streaming 2 Hz images to decode eight movement directions online, with decoders remaining stable across more than 40 days.56
  • A key translational caveat: because bone strongly attenuates ultrasound, fUS in large animals currently requires a cranial opening or acoustic window, so fully non-invasive human BCI use is not yet established.56

Footnotes

  1. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiX0FVX3lxTE9jY19IekVnaFV3bzRBTzRNVVdTdVYtQ0lWa1g4NnVpX0dvSG1QT3JjYktZYUNEN1E5VDgybm03X2R4QVp3Z0ttd3VSSHk1V05jWm12RjY0ajIwUVJpN1ZB?oc=5 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiX0FVX3lxTFA4U0dTbV9TeTdqWGxsaWwyUGhDWGRUUUFJYVQzUnRLZHU5cXNkNjZJWDI4ZlBCNDFhVElyYzZNaEdURVdEbnRXRjVJemFOV3NEN0x1b214RDdUbGNGanpj?oc=5 ↩

  3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63826-z ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12488887/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  5. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01500-7 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. https://www.vis.caltech.edu/documents/27127/Nature_Neuroscience_2023.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2021.03.003 ↩

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