Brain stimulation research at Northwestern
Two people with the same diagnosis can have symptoms coming from different circuits. And any given circuit shifts position from one brain to the next. We build the tools that find those circuits in an individual — and the treatments that act on them.
01 / Research · method
Most of what we do is working out which circuit a symptom actually sits on. That is a neuroimaging problem before it is a treatment one, and it is worth doing whether or not a stimulation target comes out the other end. When one does, the arc below is how we get there — and how we check the extra effort was worth it.
01 · EVIDENCE
Brain damage that causes a symptom, and stimulation sites that relieve it, land in different places in different people. That scatter is the starting data, not noise to be averaged away.
Lesions · DBS sites · TMS sites
02 · ANALYSIS
This is the bulk of the work: connectivity mapping, individualised network estimation, normative modelling, and the methods development underneath all of it. Plenty of these analyses are the finding — no coil required.
Functional connectivity · precision mapping · normative models
03 · TARGET
Where the work does point at treatment: stimulation only reaches a few centimetres in, so we follow the circuit to cortex a coil can actually reach. That point is rarely the one a tape measure gives you.
Cortical surface · within coil reach
04 · TRIAL
An imaging-derived target is only worth the scan time if it beats the scalp measurement clinics use today. So the targets get randomized head to head, and we report it either way.
Randomized · blinded · head-to-head
Not every project runs the whole arc. A good deal of what we publish stops at the mapping — new methods, new circuits, or a negative result about somebody else's target — and that is a finding in its own right.
02 / Research · strands
Psychiatric symptoms can involve different brain circuits even within the same diagnosis. We study those circuits to understand where to stimulate, how to reach the target, and whether targeting it changes what happens to patients.
Functional MRI, causal network mapping, and precision imaging used to locate targets. We trace connections from regions implicated in a symptom out to cortical sites that stimulation can reach, and build the tooling that makes that repeatable across datasets.
Functional connectivityImaging-guided stimulation — primarily TMS — compared against conventional targeting in randomized designs. The work spans depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, psychosis, anxiety, and addiction rather than a single diagnosis.
MRI-guided TMSA target that only works in a research scanner has not helped anyone. We publish the maps and code, and work on what it would take for a clinician with an ordinary scanner and an ordinary coil to use this.
Open maps & codeTake part
A study at Northwestern is enrolling adults with depression, anxiety, OCD, or schizophrenia to look at how TMS affects symptoms that cut across those diagnoses. Taking part involves brain imaging and a course of stimulation.
03 / People
Neuroimaging, computational methods, experimental psychology, and clinical psychiatry, split between Chicago and a continuing team in Boston.
Group lead
Stephen M. Stahl Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Scientific Director, Dauten Bipolar Center of Excellence
Faculty profile“Our work focuses on causal mapping of human brain function and dysfunction in mental illness. We map the circuits that link brain lesions and brain stimulation sites affecting psychiatric symptoms — circuits that can then be targeted with treatments such as TMS and deep brain stimulation.”
04 / Publications
Nature Human Behaviour · 2021
Damage that causes a symptom and stimulation that relieves it land on the same circuit — the observation the whole targeting method rests on.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience · 2022
The framework behind the rest of this list: lesions, stimulation, and imaging treated as three views of one causal question.
Nature Neuroscience · 2024
A candidate PTSD target derived from focal brain damage in a veteran cohort.
JAMA Psychiatry · 2025
Carries the method past mood disorders: a psychosis circuit, and a target that follows from it.
American Journal of Psychiatry · 2026
Anxiety targets converge somewhere distinct from the depression circuit — which is what makes treating the two separately a real option.
Molecular Psychiatry · 2026
Tests the previous result in people: does moving the target change which symptom improves?
JAMA Psychiatry · 2026
The trial stage in practice: imaging-based targeting put directly against the scalp measurement clinics use now.
Grouped by the kind of question rather than by year — a good share of it never involves a coil. Pick a category to narrow the list.
Nature human behaviour · 2023
A transdiagnostic network for psychiatric illness derived from atrophy and lesionsBiological psychiatry · 2024
Mapping Lesion-Related Human Aggression to a Common Brain NetworkBiological psychiatry · 2026
Dysfunctional Brain Circuits Overlap in Lesional and Idiopathic Obsessive-Compulsive DisorderAnnals of neurology · 2026
A Human Gait Circuit Derived from Brain Lesions and Deep Brain StimulationmedRxiv · 2025Preprint
Deep brain stimulation and psychosis: A case series and two candidate causal brain circuitsmedRxiv · 2025Preprint
Obsessive-compulsive disorder secondary to focal brain lesions: from lesions to networksmedRxiv · 2025Preprint
A Multi-Symptom Circuit Architecture of Obsessive-Compulsive DisordermedRxiv · 2025Preprint
Lesion network localization of functional and somatic symptomsbioRxiv · 2026Preprint
Non-invasive Neuromodulation Targeting Approach by Mapping Stimulations and Lesions That Modify Visual MemoryJournal of neuropathology and experimental neurology · 2026
An open-source application for automated quantification of Ki-67 proliferative index in meningiomasAJNR. American journal of neuroradiology · 2026
Improved Reliability of Resting-State fMRI Connectivity Using Multi-Echo Acquisition: Implications for Personalized Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation TargetingbioRxiv · 2026Preprint
Excessive Censoring Degrades Individual-Specific Cortical Parcellations and Personalized TMS TargetsScience translational medicine · 2023
Precision functional MRI mapping reveals distinct connectivity patterns for depression associated with traumatic brain injuryMolecular psychiatry · 2025
Predictive value of subgenual cingulate normative connectivity to TMS treatment site for antidepressant response in routine clinical practice: a prospective, multisite cohort studyBrain stimulation · 2026
Proximity to an SGC-DLPFC individualized functional target and electric-field modeling do not predict clinical outcomes of rTMS for treatment-resistant depressionNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025
Using causal network mapping to clarify pre-clinical brain stimulation resultsScientific reports · 2023
Individualized precision targeting of dorsal attention and default mode networks with rTMS in traumatic brain injury-associated depressionNeuroinformatics · 2022
How Machine Learning is Powering Neuroimaging to Improve Brain HealthNature. Mental health · 2025
Illuminating posterior targets for TMS beyond the prefrontal cortexBiological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2024
A New Angle on Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Coil Orientation: A Targeted Narrative ReviewTranscranial magnetic stimulation (2024) · 2025
Comparing synaptic mechanisms of iTBS and 10-Hz rTMS corticomotor plasticityNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025
Targeting depression circuitry with H1 coil Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: a retrospective circuit mapping studyCurrent topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2024
Mechanisms of Action of TMS in the Treatment of DepressionNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026
Target engagement in a head-to-head clinical trial of dysphoric versus anxiosomatic transcranial magnetic stimulation targetsBrain stimulation · 2026
Circuit-informed targeting for psychiatric comorbidity in depression: An accelerated TMS pilot studyBrain stimulation · 2025
Accelerated anxiosomatic circuit TMS: An open-label pilot study in Chinese participants with a treatment-resistant anxiety-related disorderContemporary clinical trials · 2025
Expedition for new symptom-specific TMS targets: Protocol for the first randomized causal circuit mapping trialActa psychiatrica Scandinavica · 2026
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Retreatment for Recurrent Depression: A Large Real-World Multisite Cohort StudyBrain stimulation · 2024
Accelerated 1 Hz dorsomedial prefrontal transcranial magnetic stimulation for generalized anxiety disorder in adolescents and young adults: A case seriesBrain stimulation · 2023
Differential response to H-coil repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation before versus after the first COVID-19 shutdownJournal of affective disorders · 2024
Older age associated with better antidepressant response to H1-coil transcranial magnetic stimulation in female patientsJournal of affective disorders · 2024
Cognitive effects of electroconvulsive therapy in depressed adolescentsPsychopharmacology · 2025
History of episodic heavy alcohol use predicts antidepressant effectiveness of ketamineJAMA neurology · 2023
Mapping Lesion-Related Epilepsy to a Human Brain NetworkJournal of neurology · 2023
Multiple sclerosis lesions that impair memory map to a connected memory circuitBrain : a journal of neurology · 2025
Effects of focal brain damage on political behaviour across different political ideologiesThe Journal of neuropsychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2023
Focal Lesion in the Intraparietal Sulcus: A Case for Network-Dependent Release HallucinationsMolecular psychiatry · 2026
Atrophy in preclinical Alzheimer's disease maps to a network that predicts longitudinal declineThe American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · 2024
Specific Association of Worry With Amyloid-β But Not Tau in Cognitively Unimpaired Older AdultsNature. Mental health · 2023
Lesion network localization of depression in multiple sclerosisNature medicine · 2022
Brain lesions disrupting addiction map to a common human brain circuitBiological psychiatry · 2022
Bringing Human Brain Connectomics to Clinical Practice in PsychiatryBiological psychiatry · 2023
Targeting Symptom-Specific Networks With Transcranial Magnetic StimulationNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023
The future of brain circuit-targeted therapeuticsThe American journal of psychiatry · 2023
Converging Evidence for Frontopolar Cortex as a Target for Neuromodulation in Addiction TreatmentBiological psychiatry · 2024
Critically Assessing the Unanswered Questions of How, Where, and When to Induce Plasticity in the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Network With Transcranial Magnetic StimulationThe American journal of psychiatry · 2026
Circuit-Targeted TMS for PTSD: Where, When, How, and for Whom?The American journal of psychiatry · 2023
Hitting the Target of Image-Guided Psychiatry?Nature medicine · 2024
An ancient psychedelic for traumatic brain injuryBrain stimulation · 2025
Towards accredited clinical training in brain stimulation: Proceedings from the brain stimulation subspecialty summitsCortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2023
Lesion voxels to lesion networks: The enduring value of the Vietnam Head Injury Study05 / Open research
Brain maps, analysis methods, and source code from seven studies, with more added as the work develops. If a target is real, someone else should be able to find it in their own data.
06 / Join the lab
We are interested in people who work in neuroimaging, data science, experimental psychology, and clinical research — and in people who are careful about methods, argue in the open, and would rather find out a result is wrong early than late.
Get in touch Read the lab guide firstResearch opportunities and collaboration
suman.premkumar@northwestern.eduTell us your background, what you want to work on, and what you would want to be doing in two years.
Northwestern University