Stimulation of Schwann cells by infrared pulsed stimulation

Abstract

Schwann cells are the most abundant glial cell in the peripheral nervous system. Apart from their important role on axonal myelination they exert a key role on the regulation of axonal excitability and metabolism, nerve repair, immunological response and pain sensation. However, we still need to fully understand their complete role in the peripheral nervous system. Infrared pulsed stimulation is a label-free technique that proved useful to stimulate neural cells. We present for the first time the use of this method to modulate Schwann cells physiology and the versatility of the method to induce different responses with different stimulation parameters.