Noninvasive modulation of essential tremor with focused ultrasonic waves

Abstract

Objective: Transcranial focused low-intensity ultrasound has the potential to noninvasively modulate confined regions deep inside the human brain, which could provide a new tool for causal interrogation of circuit function in humans. However, it has been unclear whether the approach is potent enough to modulate behavior. Approach: To test this, we applied low-intensity ultrasound to a deep brain thalamic target, the ventral intermediate nucleus, in three patients with essential tremor. Main results: Brief, 15 s stimulations of the target at 10% duty cycle with low-intensity ultrasound, repeated less than 30 times over a period of 90 min, nearly abolished tremor (98% and 97% tremor amplitude reduction) in 2 out of 3 patients. The effect was observed within seconds of the stimulation onset and increased with ultrasound exposure time. The effect gradually vanished following the stimulation, suggesting that the stimulation was safe with no harmful long-term consequences detected. Significance: This result demonstrates that low-intensity focused ultrasound can robustly modulate deep brain regions in humans with notable effects on overt motor behavior.