Neuromodulation in Psychiatry: Conclusions

Over the last few decades, there has been renewed interest in focal neuromodulation as a treatment approach for neuropsychiatric conditions. This has been supported by the relative success of certain techniques in the treatment of patients with neurological disorders (e.g. deep brain stimulation (DBS) for patients with Parkinson's disease or essential tremor; vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) for patients with epilepsy). There have been multiple successes and certain techniques have already made their way into clinical use: transcranial magnetic stimulation for depression, VNS for depression and DBS for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Beyond this, efforts are underway to optimize the ways we can focally stimulate the brain and methods for identifying the best patients (e.g. through the development of biomarkers). However, despite very encouraging preliminary data reviewed in this book, two industry-sponsored, Phase III trials for DBS for depression have been halted presumably due to lack of demonstrated efficacy.