Diverse DBS targets share a common pathway for instantaneous antidepressant effects in rats

• A PNAS Neuroscience study assessed diverse deep brain stimulation (DBS) targets for antidepressant effects in rats.¹
• The work reports a common neural pathway that can produce instantaneous antidepressant-like effects across multiple DBS targets.¹
• Clinical DBS for depression has been held back by inconsistent outcomes and incomplete mechanistic understanding of how targets work.¹
• By mapping several DBS sites onto a shared pathway for rapid antidepressant effects, the study offers preclinical guidance for psychiatric neuromodulation target selection.¹
• Findings are from a rat model and thus remain at the preclinical stage for translation to human psychiatric DBS.^{1 1}

Footnotes

1. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2600016123?af=R ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶