Future Prospects of Ultrasound: Role of Low-Intensity Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation in the Treatment of Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders.

BACKGROUND: Neurological and psychiatric disorders pose a persistent global health burden, with conventional therapies often providing inadequate relief. Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) has attracted considerable attention as a non-invasive neuromodulation technique offering high spatial resolution and the distinctive capacity to modulate deep brain regions. METHODS: This review synthesizes recent basic and clinical research on TUS across neurological and psychiatric disorders, and consolidates emerging evidence on its mechanisms, therapeutic applications, and safety considerations. RESULTS: Emerging evidence suggests that TUS may drive sustained neural remodeling-including synaptic plasticity, neurogenesis, and anti-neuroinflammatory effects-raising the possibility that TUS could eventually contribute to disease-modifying strategies. However, disease modification by TUS has not yet been demonstrated in humans; the evidence supporting this possibility is derived predominantly from preclinical studies and remains a hypothesis requiring confirmation in large-scale, controlled clinical trials. Building on these frameworks, we further propose a working hypothesis-termed mechanotransduction-to-oscillation encoding-which posits a nonlinear encoding relationship between the pulse repetition frequency of TUS and the intrinsic oscillatory properties of the stimulated region. CONCLUSION: This hypothesis remains largely speculative and is offered as a conceptual framework to generate testable predictions and guide future investigations. Together, these frameworks provide a cohesive strategy for advancing TUS from an exploratory neuromodulation technique toward a potentially clinically translatable precision intervention, while acknowledging that significant technical and clinical hurdles remain.