Intracellular simulated biophoton stimulation and transsynaptic signal transmission

The traditional theory holds that the information transmission between nerve cells includes electrical and chemical transmission; however, these known functional features do face some difficulties to explain the fast and efficient information processing and cognitive processes in the brain due to the existing functional limitations of neuronal networks, such as the dendritic and axonal propagation delays as well as the chemical synaptic transmission time delay that have been debated for a long time. We generated three kinds of ultraweak lasers, called as simulated biophotons, with different spectra and intensities to implement intracellular stimulation in a single nerve cell of the hippocampal areas in mouse brain slices combined with intracellular membrane potential recording and biophoton imaging techniques. We found that the simulated biophoton stimulation can lead to transsynaptic biophotonic activities and transmission in the ipsilateral and contralateral projection circuits in the hippocampus. The activity and transmission characteristics were related to the spectra and intensities of the simulated biophotons but not to the levels of membrane potentials before stimulation. These findings present specific characteristics of neural biophoton signal transmission, which may be involved in the mechanisms of processing, encoding, and storage of neural signals. (C) 2022 Author(s).

Automated summary

The traditional theory of information transmission between nerve cells includes electrical and chemical transmission. However, this theory faces difficulties in explaining the fast and efficient information processing and cognitive processes in the brain. This research found that simulated biophoton stimulation can induce neural activities and transsynaptic biophotonic transmission, which may play a role in neural signal processing, encoding, and storage mechanisms.