Recently, deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the basal forebrain (BF) has been reported to show an improvement of cognitive dysfunction in parkinson-dementia (Freund et al., 2009, Arch Neurol). Although the nucleus basalis of Meynert (NBM) and surrounding regions are thought to be a new target for DBS, it is not well understood how electrical stimulation of this brain area exerts its effect on cognitive functions including memory, attention, arousal and perception. In the present study, we focused on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the hippocampus of urethane-anesthetized rats, and analyzed neural activity in these areas in response to single or burst BF-stimulation. Firstly, a burst stimulation was applied to NBM (500ms, 100Hz), and measured the LFP changes before and after stimulation. The LFP data were subjected to spectral analysis, which revealed that the lower frequency power (< 10Hz) of LFP was largely decreased in both hemispheres. This modulatory effect on PFC LFP lasted for 2-5 sec after the termination of 500ms stimulation, and which was similar to those observed in the visual cortex (Goard and Dan, 2009, Nature Neuroscience). Next, we monitored the CA1 hippocampal neural activity evoked by a single electrical pulse stimulation to either NBM, the horizontal limb of the diagonal band of Broca (HDB), the medial septum (MS) or the septohippocampal nucleus (SHi). Stimulation to all of these brain regions elicited reliable neural activity in the ipsilateral CA1. The recorded CA1 LFP showed short-latency negativity peaking at 10-30 ms followed by a longer-latency component at 60-100 ms; the latency and waveform of the evoked LFP were changed depending on the stimulus site in the BF. Our data characterized the dynamics of neural activation following basal forebrain stimulation, which is a first step to understanding the therapeutic mechanism of action of DBS applied to this brain area.