One-third of schizophrenia patients exhibit treatment resistance, underscoring the need for mechanism-based interventions. We report that deep brain stimulation of the substantia nigra pars reticulata has acutely alleviated persistent auditory hallucinations by 64% in a treatment-resistant schizophrenia patient. Deep brain stimulation normalized hallucination-correlated elevation of intraoperative electrocortical theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling at language-related cortical areas. These findings suggest aberrant cortical synchronization may be involved in the generation of verbal hallucinations and highlight subcortical modulation as a potential therapeutic strategy.
Shen et al. (2026) studied this question.