ArticleTranslational psychiatry2025
Effects of deep brain stimulation of the nucleus accumbens and anterior limb of the internal capsule on heroin addiction: Over five years of long-term follow-up in a prospective open-label pilot study.
Article in Translational psychiatry, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Rewiring reward in addiction: a systematic review of human evidence for deep brain stimulation and lesion approaches in substance use disorders.Acta neurochirurgica · 2026Pooled it
- Radiomodulation-The Final Frontier of Radiosurgery?Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Activity-based anorexia enhances glutamatergic synaptic transmission and neuronal excitability within the nucleus accumbens of female mice.Physiological reports · 2026Article
- From lobotomy to connectomics: a critical review of contemporary psychosurgery.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Review
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
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Abstract
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been suggested to be a safe and effective therapeutic option for drug addiction. Although sustained abstinence is better predicted by at least 5 years of drug-free duration, few studies have followed DBS-treated addicted individuals for more than 5 years. Twenty patients with treatment-resistant heroin addiction were enrolled in this prospective, single-center, open-label pilot study. Patients who received DBS of the nucleus accumbens (NAc) with or without the anterior limb of the internal capsule (ALIC) were followed up for over 5 years, and continuous abstinence, heroin craving (HC), psychometric instrument scores and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes served as the outcome parameters. Twelve patients maintained sustained abstinence for five years after DBS treatment, and no severe complications or adverse events occurred. A linear mixed-effects model revealed a significant main effect of postsurgical time and relapse status on HC visual analog scale (HC-VAS), SF-36, SCL-90, HAMD, and Y-BOCS scores. Preoperative marital status, HAMD cognitive and SCL-90 psychoticism subscores significantly differed between abstinent and relapsed patients, and persistent abstinence was correlated with moderate acute (VAS 5-8) and delayed (VAS 4-6) psychopsychiatric responses to stimulation. ERP analysis revealed a significant decrease in the drug-pleasant LPP amplitude (400-1000 ms) from baseline to 2-3 years after surgery. The present study suggested that DBS of the NAc/ALIC is effective for reducing heroin craving and preventing relapse in the long term and may reverse motivational attentional bias from drug-related stimuli to pleasant stimuli for heroin-addicted individuals.
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