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PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS

The future of personalized brain stimulation

Nature Medicine volume 27, pages 196–197 (2021)Cite this article

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New personalized brain-stimulation methods for the treatment of depression and obsessive–compulsive symptoms provide hope for future treatment applications.

In their study, Grover et al. explored the feasibility of personalized frequency-specific cortical stimulation for obsessive–compulsive symptoms5. The authors conceptualized that compulsive behaviors may arise from the development of excessive habits mediated by pathological beta–gamma oscillations from the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) to the ventral striatum, which results in the abnormal mapping of rewarding outcomes with preceding events. For 60 healthy study participants, the investigators determined each person’s reward-related beta–gamma frequency peak over the mOFC through the use of scalp electroencephalography. They then used this personalized frequency for non-invasive neuromodulation with transcranial alternating-current stimulation. Personalized stimulation attenuated beta–gamma oscillations and associated reward learning more than control stimulation did. In a second stage, they applied the intervention over five days in a nonclinical population of 68 study participants; this strategy reduced the severity of compulsive habits such as checking, ordering and hoarding, especially in people with high baseline symptom severity.

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Fig. 1: Neuromodulation for psychiatric disorders.

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  1. Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA

    Martijn Figee & Helen Mayberg

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  1. Martijn Figee
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  2. Helen Mayberg
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Correspondence to Helen Mayberg.

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H.M. reports consulting and intellectual licensing fees from Abbott Labs.

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Figee, M., Mayberg, H. The future of personalized brain stimulation. Nat Med 27, 196–197 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01243-7

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