Brain stimulation in neuropsychiatry

摘要

Evidence from neuropathological studies, as well as an emerging in vivo neuroimaging literature, has implicated abnormalities in neural circuitry in neu-ropsychiatric disorders, ranging from psychiatric and addictive disorders to neurodegenerative disorders. As such, neural circuits are being identified as a focus of therapeutic targets, as exemplified in the new classification framework for mental disorders (research domain criteria, RDoC) proposed by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institute of Health. Specifically, RDoC conceptualizes neuropsychiatric illnesses as 'disorders of brain circuits' (Insel et al., 2010). The observation that pharmacotherapies have limited benefit and serious side effects, in some cases, has stimulated interest in neural circuitry, as opposed to neurotransmitter systems, as a therapeutic target. Thus, there has been a renewed interest in brain stimulation methods to investigate, modulate, and treat abnormal neural circuitry in neuropsychiatric disorders.