Recently, Professor Chen Zhong’s team from Zhejiang Chinese Medical University (ZCMU) published a research paper titled “One-hertz low-frequency stimulation of anterior substantia nigra pars reticulata attenuates seizure via biased disinhibitory circuits” in Epilepsia (a journal of the International League Against Epilepsy, ranked as a Top Q1 journal by the Chinese Academy of Sciences). This study is the first to reveal the heterogeneous effects of low-frequency stimulation (LFS) on different subregions of the substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNR) in epilepsy treatment. Furthermore, it explores the neural mechanisms by which LFS interventions in distinct SNR subregions influence seizure activity. The findings provide a potential precise target for the clinical application of LFS in epilepsy therapy.

The first author of this study is Jiang Dongxiao, a doctoral student from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ZCMU. The co-first authors are Yang Lin, a postdoctoral researcher from the First Affiliated Hospital of ZCMU, and Yu Lilong, a master’s student from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ZCMU. The corresponding authors are Professor Chen Zhong and Fei Fan, a university-appointed research fellow of ZCMU. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation, and several other grants.