Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, after Alzheimer disease. It is characterized by a slow, continuous death of dopaminergic neurons in the nigrostriatal pathway, followed by severe motor and non-motor symptoms. Parkinson’s disease affects 6.3 million peoples, with a homogeneous distribution worldwide.There are several symptomatic strategies applied in clinic, such as the dopa-therapy (gold standard) and the deep brain stimulation. However, theses therapeutical approaches are not neuroprotective. Indeed, to date, there is no strategy able to effectively slow or rescue the course of the disease. Alternatively, a growing number of studies show the cytoprotective potential of a near infrared illumination. Recently, several studies showed the neuroprotective potential of these wavelengths in rodent models of Parkinson disease.The aim of this work is to confirm and optimize the efficacy of a near infrared treatment in Parkinson’s disease, as the first step for the future clinical trial.We used the MPTP mice and the 6-OHDA unilateral rat models to assess the feasibility and the effectiveness of an intracerebral chronical illumination. We also measured the influence of the wavelength, the time window (pre-, post-treatment), the global optical energy delivered (continuous vs discontinuous, number of flashs, energy of one flash), the duration of one flash and the optical power on the therapeutical efficacy.We demonstrate here the feasibility of an intracerebral chronical illumination and its neuroprotective potential. We show that the 670 and 810 nm wavelengths both protect the dopaminergic cells in the rodent models, and produce a quick activation of the protective mechanisms (< 20 min). The neuroprotective effect stays effective at least 48 hours after the illumination. Moreover, we show that a discontinuous illumination seems better than a continuous one. The global optical energy delivered has no significant influence on the efficacy. In contrast, the optical power has an everything-or-nothing effect. The therapeutic efficacy is also flash duration dependent (bell effect).All these results confirm and complete the scientific literature. Together with the work on non-human primates from my team, these results will be useful to design the future clinical trial.