Sarah Lisanby, MD, Chief

The Brain Stimulation and Therapeutic Modulation (BSTM) Division specializes in the use of emerging electromagnetic means of modulating brain function to study brain behavior relationships and to study and treat psychiatric and neurological disorders. The ability to stimulate targeted brain structures noninvasively has opened for the first time the potential to probe the circuitry underlying brain-based disorders and represents a powerful new tool for treating disorders that fail to respond to conventional therapies.

The BSTM encompasses research programs (technology development, preclinical, translational, and clinical) and clinical services utilizing existing and emerging brain stimulation and neuromodulation interventions at the New York State Psychiatric Institute [link: http://www.nyspi.org/] (NYSPI) and the New York-Presbyterian Hospital (NYPH). These techniques include cranial electrical stimulation (CES), deep brain stimulation (DBS), electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), implanted cortical stimulation (ICS), magnetic seizure therapy (MST), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). These techniques are applied as probes of brain function, as therapeutic interventions, or in conjunction with functional imaging (e.g. simultaneous TMS/fMRI, TMS/PET, TMS/MRS).

The Technology Development Laboratory designs and implements novel electromagnetic brain stimulation devices, models the electric and magnetic fields induced in the brain during stimulation, and conducts basic research studies on the effects of various stimulation parameters on the subjects’ physiological response. Our preclinical work includes studies of the impact of brain stimulation on hippocampal plasticity, intracerebral recordings of the neurophysiological effects of brain stimulation, and applications of brain stimulation techniques in cognitive neuroscience and non-treatment studies.

Our clinical research facilities include the Brain Behavior Clinic (BBC) at NYSPI, the Brain Stimulation Service at NYPH (offering a new outpatient ECT service as well as clinical treatment with VNS and TMS), two human TMS treatment suites at NYSPI, and the ECT suites at NYSPI and NYPH.