This edition of Psychiatric Clinics, guest edited by Drs. Scott T. Aaronson and Noah S. Philip, will cover a variety of essential topics surrounding Neuromodulation in psychiatric treatment. Articles discuss Electroconvulsive therapy for depression (and other conditions), Clinical applications and basic mechanisms for deep brain stimulation, clinical studies of Vagus Nerve Stimulation, Transcranial magnetic stimulation for Depression and other disorders, Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, Neuromodulation in Children, Efficacy Analyses of Neuromodulation, and Future Stimulation approaches/considerations.

Psychiatric neuromodulation is defined as any intervention intended to alter nervous system function using energy fields such as electricity, magnetism, or both, with the goal to improve psychiatric symptoms or related conditions. This concept is not new: neuromodulation, in one form or another, has been used to treat physical maladies for over a thousand years,1 although its use for psychiatric disorders became popular in the past century. Since the 1930s,2 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been recognized as an effective treatment for severe depression, catatonia, and other severe mental health disorders. Over the following decades, newer technologies emerged, including vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), and deep brain stimulation (DBS); in the last decade, there has been renewed interest in other emerging technologies, including novel adaptations or approaches to rTMS (ie, those synchronized to brain rhythms; eg, Leuchter and colleagues3) or employing novel stimulation patterns (eg, Li and colleagues4), and low-intensity electrical stimulation.

Contents

۱. Electroconvulsive Therapy in Depression
۲. When All Else Fails
۳. Deep Brain Stimulation in Psychiatry
۴. Deep Brain Stimulation
۵. The Mechanism of Action of Vagus Nerve Stimulation in Treatment-Resistant Depression
۶. Vagus Nerve Stimulation
۷. Updates on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Therapy for Major Depressive Disorder
۸. Clinical Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and …
۹. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Psychiatric Disorders
۱۰. Therapeutic Applications of Noninvasive Neuromodulation in Children and Adolescents
۱۱. Therapeutic Applications of Invasive Neuromodulation in Children and Adolescents
۱۲. Clinical Usefulness of Therapeutic Neuromodulation for Major Depression
۱۳. Noninvasive Focused Ultrasound for Neuromodulation
۱۴. The Future of Brain Stimulation Treatments