Fig. 4: Offline ultrasound stimulation to the left LGN significantly decreases task-related activity in the ipsilateral visual cortex during a visual checkerboard task, early after stimulation.

a Stimulation of the left (highlighted) LGN results in significantly decreased task-related activity in the directly connected ipsilateral visual cortex but not in the contralateral visual cortex (blue-light blue; FLAME 1 + 2 mixed-effects model in FEAT, FSL, cluster-corrected with a threshold of z = 3.1, p < 0.05). These significant areas overlap the mean cortical activation map of the occipital cortex during all task blocks (green; z = 3.1, p < 0.05). b Change in task-related activity (difference in z-scored BOLD task-related change) after LGN (left) and MDN (right) stimulation within the peak task-related activation region in (a) for each run separately (n = 4 participants; one LGN stimulation session and one MDN stimulation session in each participant). Data is represented as mean ± SD. c The peak change in task-related activity during LGN ultrasound stimulation was highly similar across individual participants. Green: mean task-related activation, white: group mean results (as in a). d Change in task-related activity (difference in z-scored BOLD task-related change) after LGN stimulation within the peak task-related activation region in (a) for each run separately, at the early and late timepoints (n = 4 participants; early and late timepoints of each session were compared to the baseline for each participant). Data is represented as mean ± SD. Data in (b) and (d) is extracted from the area of significant change in (a) from the appropriate sessions and used to explain our significant findings; no statistical tests were conducted on these data.