iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

In sum, while low MB-FUS doses are safe, high doses can cause various dramatic and persistent disruptions with distinct recovery time courses. Our findings suggest that expanding MB-FUS to new (pre-)clinical use cases will require a holistic safety evaluation with multimodal readouts. (10/10)

000

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

We also tested whether these prolonged behavioral deficits were reflected by long-term effects on the brain. Longitudinal MRIs indeed revealed signs suggesting significant microhemorrhages and edema – persisting for at least 3 weeks! (9/10)

A graph showing signs of elevated microhemorrhages after high-dose MB-FUS treatment, persisting over the course of 3 weeks. After initially very strong signs of microhemorrhages on the day of treatment, the signs were reduced one day after, but stayed stably elevated over the course of 3 weeks.

100

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

However, when we looked closer, about half of the rats had changed their dances and didn’t do their original ‘choreography’ anymore! In the future, we will test if the ‘dance memories’ were lost or if our rats had to adapt their movements to compensate for some damage-induced impairments. (8/10)

Trajectories of the movements of the left and right hands of an example rat before, 1 day and 15 days after MB-FUS treatment. After treatment trajectories are different from before and more variable. After 15 days, trajectories are more stereotyped, but the movements are different compared to before treatment.

100

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

When our rats continued training, their performance recovered after about 1 week, and after about 2 weeks, their dances, which had become quite variable after treatment, became stereotyped again. (7/10)

$A graph showing the fraction of 'good' trials in our motor task per day for control rats and rats treated with a high-dose of MB-FUS. Shown are 15 days before and 15 days after treatment. The experimental group shows a drop to 20% of good trials (compared to before) after treatment, but recovers over the course of 2 weeks.$

100

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Notably, behavior was only disrupted when we targeted task-relevant subcortical areas, and not only cortex alone - consistent with our previous findings that (motor) cortex is not necessary for task execution in experts. This also suggests that adverse MB-FUS effects were target-specific. (6/10)

100

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

We found acute microhemorrhages, astrocyte activation and disruptions of learned motor behavior. Rats trained on our motor task, in which they develop highly stereotyped little ‘dances’, showed disruptions of both task performance and of their intricate dances. (5/10)

Left: Example MRI images of the brains of 2 rats treated with a low or a high MB-FUS dose. The high dose animal shows strong signs of microhemorrhages. Right: Performance plots of 2 example rats treated with a low or high MB-FUS dose. After a low dose, the performance is unchanged, while it is heavily disrupted after high-dose treatment.

100

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

First the good news: Low doses were safe! High doses, however, caused dramatic adverse effects across our various readouts! While comparing doses across rats and humans comes with caveats, these high doses were comparable to, or a bit above, the limit for doses used in the clinic. (4/10)

100

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

But are higher doses safe? And what is the best way to test them? Sophie and Alex were not satisfied with the common, single readouts of MB-FUS effects and combined MRI, histology, and complex learned motor behavior in rats to identify acute and long-term adverse effects. (3/10)

100

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

MB-FUS is a rapidly growing approach to deliver drugs through the blood-brain barrier (BBB). There is broad interest in expanding its use to treat diseases from brain tumors to Parkinson’s and to deliver compounds in basic research – which may require higher MB-FUS doses than currently used. (2/10)

Scheme of Microbubble-enhanced Focused Ultrasound (MB-FUS) for opening of the Blood-Brain barrier (BBB). Shown is how a FUS beam is targeted at the brain of a rat. MBs, previously injected into the bloodstream, oscillate due to the FUS, causing a temporary opening of the BBB. We also monitored the acoustic emissions generated by these effects to determine the 'effective dose' of the treatment.

100

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

PREPRINT ALERT! Sophie and Alex, amazing PhD students from the Wolff and Anastasidis labs, teamed up to venture into Microbubble-enhanced focused ultrasound (MB-FUS) and took a new, multimodal approach to test its safety in-depth. (1/10) 🧪 #neuroskyence #neuroscience www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Neurobehavioral effects of focused ultrasound-mediated blood-brain barrier opening

Microbubble-enhanced focused ultrasound (MB-FUS) enables noninvasive blood-brain barrier (BBB) opening to improve the delivery of drugs and other therapeutics to the brain, supporting more effective t...

193

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Come to Sophie’s thesis proposal today and learn about her exciting project and cool data!

030

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Come see me this morning at our poster! I’ll present my students Sophie’s and Tomi’s work on a role of the subthalamic nucleus in regulating motor variability. Poster U12! #SfN25

060

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Thank you, @klingensteinorg.bsky.social for the great conference and support! A lot of fun, as always!

190

Steffen Wolff @sbe-wolff.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Looking forward to having you here, Emily!!

110

Reposted by Steffen Wolff

UM-MIND - Institute for Neuroscience Discovery @um-mind.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

NIH funding is central to the research enterprise, providing critical support for neuroscience research across the country and here at UM-MIND. What are the effects of federal budget cuts to neuroscience research? Learn more in the infographic below and share with your community. #NIHSavesLives

infographic on the effects of federal budget cuts on neuroscience research, showing graphics depicting the following points: 1) up to 1 in 4 Americans live with chronic pain; 2) 1 in 36 children in the US live with autism spectrum disorder; 3) NIH drives therapeutic research & development in the US; 99.7% of FDA-approved products originated with NIH funding; 84% of medical patents originated with NIH funding; 4) nearly 1 in 5 young adults in the US live with depression

infographic on the effects of federal budget cuts on neuroscience research, showing graphics depicting the following points: 1) 6.7 million adults in the US live with Alzheimer's disease; 2) 5.5 million Americans live with traumatic brain injury related disabilities; 3) NIH is a critical developer of therapeutics and medications for the brain. Investments through the NIH BRAIN Initiative, individual research grants, and training programs are key to developing lifesaving therapies and to reducing disease burden. Removing NIH funding will stop this progress! NIH supports research in all 50 states; over 80% of NIH's budget supports research at universities across the US.

0119