Roadmap charts brain-computer interfaces for depression, anxiety and PTSD

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have made remarkable progress restoring movement and speech in people with paralysis.

While brain-computer interface technology thus far has largely focused on decoding motor function, the disorders responsible for the greatest global burden of brain disease—including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder—are fundamentally disorders of cognition: how we attend, remember, decide, and regulate emotion.

As researchers seek to expand the clinical potential of BCIs, a new review argues that treating cognitive disorders will require fundamentally different approaches than the current BCI motor applications. ...