NCMD Research Seminar Series 17th October 2025

Presenter: Professor Marcus Kaiser, Professor of Neuroinformatics Precision Imaging, School of Medicine, Nottingham University

"Towards personalised, closed-loop, and at-home ultrasound neuromodulation"

Human connectomes are individual like fingerprints. The effect of stimulation not only depends on the target region, but also on its connectivity profile within functionally relevant circuits. To understand the role of a personalised approach, we developed a whole-brain model to represent fMRI changes, enabling us to investigate how TUS-induced effects propagate throughout the brain with increasing stimulus intensity. Communication models based on diffusion processes outperform models based on shortest path efficiency. Moreover, our mechanistic model suggests that the stimulation mechanistically disrupts the excitatory/inhibitory balance by increasing inhibition, rather than by enhancing excitation. We will outline how this approach can be extended towards closed-loop stimulation with a goal towards applications in mental health (schizophrenia and depression). Finally, we discuss ultrasound stimulation at-home. This is already possible for vagus nerve stimulation: for example, using the Zenbud system led to a 79% remission rate for anxiety. However, future development might lead to mobile transcranial ultrasound devices.

Marcus Kaiser is Professor of Neuroinformatics at the University of Nottingham. He is leading a team using computer simulations and brain stimulation devices to improve cognitive performance in patients suffering from severe mental illness (schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder). The long-term goal is to replace pharmaceutical drugs for treating mental health conditions with non-invasive brain stimulation interventions. He is author of 'Changing Connectomes' (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/changing-connectomes ). He is Chair of Neuroinformatics UK, Chair of the Neuroinformatics SIG of the British Neuroscience Association (BNA), Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), member of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Data Science Advisory Group, and co-director of the Centre for Neurotechnology, Neuromodulation, and Neurotherapeutics (https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/science/research/n3centre/n3centre.aspx ).