ArticleNature communications2025
Non-invasive ultrasonic neuromodulation of the human nucleus accumbens impacts reward sensitivity.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Suppression of pathological oscillations with transcranial focused ultrasound in Parkinson's disease.Nature communications · 2026Trial
- Low-Intensity Focused Ultrasound of the Amygdala in Depression and Anxiety: A First-in-Human Active-Controlled Trial.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Future Prospects of Ultrasound: Role of Low-Intensity Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation in the Treatment of Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders.European journal of neurology · 2026Review
- Depression in neurodegenerative disease: neurobiological mechanisms and emerging treatments.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
- Ultrasound neuromodulation reveals distinct roles of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula in learning.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Empirical limitations of current low-intensity focused ultrasound simulation platforms.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Treatment of alcohol use disorder via magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound ablation surgery.Addiction science & clinical practice · 2026Article
- Effect of low-intensity focused ultrasound on hippocampus of alcohol addicted mice: a preliminary study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation as an Emerging Treatment for Substance use Disorder: Promise and Precaution.Current addiction reports · 2026Review
- Leveraging transcranial ultrasound stimulation to enhance self-regulation in emotion and sleep.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Precisely neuromodulating deep brain regions could bring transformative advancements in both neuroscience and treatment. We demonstrate that non-invasive transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) can selectively modulate deep brain activity and affect learning and decision making, comparable to deep brain stimulation (DBS). We tested whether TUS could causally influence neural and behavioural responses by targeting the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) using a reinforcement learning task. Twenty-six healthy adults completed a within-subject TUS-fMRI experiment with three conditions: TUS to the NAcc, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), or Sham. After TUS, participants performed a probabilistic learning task during fMRI. TUS-NAcc altered BOLD responses to reward expectation in the NAcc and surrounding areas. It also affected reward-related behaviours, including win-stay strategy use, learning rate following rewards, learning curves, and repetition rates of rewarded choices. DBS-NAcc perturbed the same features, confirming target engagement. These findings establish TUS as a viable approach for non-invasive deep-brain neuromodulation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.