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Unilateral striatal deep brain stimulation improves cognitive control
Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
|November 26, 2025
Summary
Unilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS) effectively improves cognitive control, matching bilateral stimulation
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychiatric Disorders
- Deep Brain Stimulation
Background:
- Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VCVS) treats psychiatric conditions like OCD by enhancing cognitive control.
- Clinical efficacy of VCVS DBS is limited by incomplete understanding of how stimulation parameters and targets influence neural activity and behavior.
- Prior research established a preclinical model for VCVS DBS using cognitive control but did not address laterality effects observed in humans.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate laterality effects in a rodent model of VCVS DBS, specifically comparing unilateral and bilateral mid-striatum stimulation.
- To determine if unilateral stimulation can improve cognitive control similarly to bilateral stimulation.
- To examine sex differences in cognitive control improvement from stimulation.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a rodent model to study cognitive control, a key decision-making component impaired in psychiatric illnesses.
- Administered right and left-unilateral mid-striatum stimulation and assessed effects on response times and accuracy.
- Employed computational modeling to analyze how stimulation modifies decision-making variables.
Main Results:
- Both right and left-unilateral stimulation improved cognitive control by reducing response times without affecting accuracy.
- These findings replicate the cognitive control improvements observed with bilateral stimulation in previous studies.
- Computational modeling indicated that unilateral and bilateral stimulation modulate the same decision-making variables.
- Females exhibited the same cognitive control improvement from stimulation as males.
Conclusions:
- Unilateral mid-striatum stimulation is as effective as bilateral stimulation in enhancing cognitive control in a rodent model.
- This validates the rodent model for studying DBS mechanisms and suggests unilateral stimulation may offer therapeutic advantages.
- Findings confirm that sex does not influence cognitive control improvement from stimulation, providing crucial insights for DBS therapies.
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