38. Transcranial Focused Ultrasound of the Amygdala Down-Modulates Fear Neural Circuit Activation and Facilitates Fear Extinction

Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) is a novel noninvasive brain stimulation method that can target brain tissue millimeters in the diameter anywhere in the brain. This superior spatial and depth specificity enables the neuromodulation of deeper subcortical brain regions previously inaccessible by other noninvasive methods. The amygdala is a deeper brain region that plays a central role in fear processing. We investigated whether tFUS of the amygdala could change neural and subjective measures of fear.