The short version
- In an NYU pilot of 10 people with schizophrenia, one 10-minute focused ultrasound session lowered delusion scores while a blocked sham session did not.
- The difference lasted the full week of follow-up, and side effects were mild and no more common than with sham.
- A UCSF trial of up to 12 people will test five daily sessions aimed at the caudate for voices that persist despite medication.
Psychiatrists at NYU Langone gave 10 people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, all still symptomatic on medication, two 10-minute sessions a week apart. In one, MRI-guided ultrasound pulsed into the globus pallidus interna, a deep region tied to thought and emotion. In the other, the device ran with the sound blocked. Neither patients nor raters knew which was which. Delusion scores fell by 1.2 points on average after the real session and rose 0.4 after sham, and the gap held for seven days. The results appeared on October 20 in npj Acoustics.
Side effects were fatigue, headache and brief upticks in symptoms, mild and no more frequent than with sham. It was a single session, the team has not yet confirmed the beam hit its target, and the paper sits behind a login, so we could not check the scale used. At UCSF, Karuna Subramaniam’s Phase 1 trial will give up to 12 adults five daily sessions to the caudate, and five sham, for voices that persist on antipsychotics. The Focused Ultrasound Foundation, which funds it, says enrollment is underway and early participants heard fewer voices. The trial registry still lists it as not yet recruiting, with a February 2027 start.
It is the same tool as in our report on ultrasound-guided gene editing in mice, now aimed at symptoms in people.
