Functional Ultrasound Characterization of Spatiotemporal Cerebral Hemodynamic Responses Evoked by Whisker Stimulation

Authors

Bian, C., Yang, J., Xie, M., He, J., Sun, Y. H. S., Zhao, J., Chen, Z., Lai, H.-Y., Yuan, Z., Wang, Y., Qiu, Z.

Abstract

Functional ultrasound imaging (fUS) measures task related changes in cerebral blood volume (CBV) with fine spatiotemporal sampling and has been applied to functional mapping and brain signal decoding. Its spatial and temporal information accessible may depend on both imaging parameters and the transformation of neural input through neurovascular coupling and vascular dynamics. Controlled stimulus response measurements are therefore needed to empirically characterize the functional operating ranges of fUS. Here, the mouse whisker barrel system was used to examine how defined spatial and temporal features of sensory stimulation are represented in fUS CBV signals. Whisker identity and number, stimulation duration, and inter pulse gap were systematically varied in awake, head fixed mice. Unilateral all whisker stimulation produced contralaterally dominant fUS CBV responses in the primary somatosensory barrel field and ventral posteromedial thalamic nucleus. Different whisker conditions were associated with distinguishable cortical response distributions, while stimulation involving more whiskers was associated with broader cortical recruitment. Across stimulation durations from 0.5 to 10 s, brief stimuli produced measurable responses, and the response strength and spatiotemporal evolution varied with stimulus duration. For successive 2 s stimuli, responses frequently overlapped at a 1 s inter pulse gap, were separable in most recordings at 2 s, and were consistently resolved across four mice at gaps of 3 s or longer. These observations were further organized into an initial low parameter framework linking selected stimulation factors to spatial activation patterns and temporal response features. This study systematically characterizes the spatiotemporal response patterns and limits of fUS CBV signals, providing an experimental foundation for the development of fUS based decoding models and the design of stimulation paradigms suitable for reliable fUS decoding.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 04 Sep 2026.

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