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Two new technologies have potential to help people with severe psychiatric illnesses.

Focused ultrasound neuromodulation can influence neural activity in deep brain structures.

Longitudinal precision functional mapping involves examining changes in a person’s brain circuitry over time.

By Eugene Rubin, MD, Ph.D., and Charles Zorumski, MD

Two recent articles in JAMA Psychiatry examine technologies that will likely advance psychiatric research and lead to future treatments. Noah Philip, Mascha van’t Wout-Frank, and Amanda Arulpragasam review the potential of focused ultrasound neuromodulation (FUS). Peter Manza, Charles Lynch, Joshua Siegel, and Jacqueline Clauss discuss longitudinal precision functional mapping.

Low-intensity focused ultrasound stimulation

Psychiatric conditions are increasingly understood as abnormalities in specific brain circuits. Many brain circuits associated with psychiatric symptoms involve brain structures deep inside the brain—that is, those not near the skull and below the cerebral cortex. Currently used stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcortical direct current stimulation (tDCS) have less influence on deep brain matter than on brain areas nearer the skull surface.........

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