The role of ultrasound in addressing neurodegenerative diseases: A review of mechanisms, applications, and challenges.

With the aging of the global population, neurodegenerative diseases have become a major public health challenge. Currently, there are many limitations in the traditional treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as medicine, deep brain stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and transcranial direct current stimulation, including the inability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier (BBB) accurately and challenges in achieving precise and quantitative control during the treatment process. Ultrasound is an emerging neural modulation technology that stands out for its non-invasive nature, precise targeting, and unique ability to penetrate the BBB, demonstrating tremendous application potential. In this review, we summarized the common types of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and the limitations of traditional treatments. It delves into the physical principles, classification, mechanisms, and unique advantages of ultrasound therapy in neuromodulation. It provides a detailed account of the current status of application of ultrasound in neurodegenerative diseases, and represents the advantages and challenges currently faced by ultrasound therapy, which offers insights into future research directions and technological improvements.