Fig. 5: Functional connectivity changes after transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS): seed-based connectivity analysis.

Whole-brain maps illustrate regions showing increased functional connectivity with a the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) seed after TUS was applied to the dACC, and b the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) seed after TUS was applied to the PCC, compared with sham. For each seed region, a whole-brain mass-univariate GLM was performed and the Z statistic images (thresholded using clusters determined by Z > 2.3 and a FWER corrected cluster significance threshold of p = 0.05) from the two one-sided contrasts (i.e., fMRI Run 1/2 vs. the average of the sham runs) are shown for statistically significant clusters. Clusters in orange represent regions with significantly higher functional connectivity at ~13 mins after TUS (i.e., fMRI Run 1), and clusters in yellow show regions with significantly higher functional connectivity at ~46 mins after TUS (fMRI Run 2) compared with the average of both sham runs. For each seed region, the spider plots show the functional connectivity (parameter estimate from the GLM) during each run sampled from the regions showing significantly increased connectivity and three control regions: (i) the region not targeted with TUS (i.e., for the dACC seed, this would be the PCC, and vice versa), (ii) a region known to be highly connected to the seed region (the anterior insula for the dACC seed, and the medial prefrontal cortex for the PCC seed), and (iii) the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The error bars show the standard error of the mean. Whole-brain maps are overlaid on the average T1-weighted MRI of all participants. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.