Scholars@Duke
Nanthia Suthana

Nanthia Suthana

Professor in Neurosurgery
Neurosurgery

Selected Publications

Effects of virtual reality on spatiotemporal gait parameters and freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease

Journal Article Npj Parkinson S Disease · December 1, 2025 Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used to study freezing of gait (FOG) in Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, overground gait in VR typically exhibits shorter, wider, and slower steps than real-world gait in both healthy and PD populations. This altered ... Full text Cite

Brain activity associated with breakthrough food preoccupation in an individual on tirzepatide.

Journal Article Nat Med · December 2025 Obesity and related conditions are associated with distressing food preoccupation that often culminates in dysregulated eating behaviors. Incretin-based therapies can reduce excessive weight in obesity, but their impact on dysregulated eating behaviors rem ... Full text Link to item Cite

Multiregional representations of intertemporal decision making in human single neurons.

Journal Article Sci Rep · July 8, 2025 Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying delay discounting-the tendency to prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards-is critical for elucidating the etiology of impulsive decision-making, a hallmark of several psychiatric conditi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Human neural dynamics of real-world and imagined navigation.

Journal Article Nat Hum Behav · April 2025 The ability to form episodic memories and later imagine them is integral to the human experience, influencing our recollection of the past and envisioning of the future. While rodent studies suggest the medial temporal lobe, especially the hippocampus, is ... Full text Link to item Cite

Broad repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the precuneus in Alzheimer's disease: A rationale and study design

Journal Article Alzheimer S and Dementia Translational Research and Clinical Interventions · January 1, 2025 INTRODUCTION: Brain network dysfunction, particularly within the default mode network (DMN), is an increasingly apparent contributor to the clinical progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) can target key ... Full text Cite

Transcranial Focused Ultrasound Targeting the Amygdala May Increase Psychophysiological and Subjective Negative Emotional Reactivity in Healthy Older Adults

Journal Article Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science · September 1, 2024 Background: The amygdala is highly implicated in an array of psychiatric disorders but is not accessible using currently available noninvasive neuromodulatory techniques. Low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound (TFUS) is a neuromodulatory technique t ... Full text Cite

Responsive deep brain stimulation guided by ventral striatal electrophysiology of obsession durably ameliorates compulsion.

Journal Article Neuron · January 3, 2024 Treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) occurs in approximately one-third of OCD patients. Obsessions may fluctuate over time but often occur or worsen in the presence of internal (emotional state and thoughts) and external (visual and tact ... Full text Link to item Cite

Invasive electrophysiological recordings from humans during navigation

Chapter · January 1, 2024 Finding our way and navigating through novel and familiar environments are important functions in our daily lives. Rare invasive electrophysiological recordings of human brain activity have enabled critical insights into how the brain supports these cognit ... Full text Cite

Dynamic neural representations of memory and space during human ambulatory navigation.

Journal Article Nature communications · October 2023 Our ability to recall memories of personal experiences is an essential part of daily life. These episodic memories often involve movement through space and thus require continuous encoding of one's position relative to the surrounding environment. The medi ... Full text Open Access Cite

Mobile cognition: imaging the human brain in the 'real world'.

Journal Article Nat Rev Neurosci · June 2023 Cognitive neuroscience studies in humans have enabled decades of impactful discoveries but have primarily been limited to recording the brain activity of immobile participants in a laboratory setting. In recent years, advances in neuroimaging technologies ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

A pilot study of closed-loop neuromodulation for treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder.

Journal Article Nat Commun · May 24, 2023 The neurophysiological mechanisms in the human amygdala that underlie post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remain poorly understood. In a first-of-its-kind pilot study, we recorded intracranial electroencephalographic data longitudinally (over one year) i ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

A wearable platform for closed-loop stimulation and recording of single-neuron and local field potential activity in freely moving humans.

Journal Article Nat Neurosci · March 2023 Advances in technologies that can record and stimulate deep brain activity in humans have led to impactful discoveries within the field of neuroscience and contributed to the development of novel therapies for neurological and psychiatric disorders. Furthe ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Transcranial focused ultrasound selectively increases perfusion and modulates functional connectivity of deep brain regions in humans.

Journal Article Front Neural Circuits · 2023 BACKGROUND: Low intensity, transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) is a re-emerging brain stimulation technique with the unique capability of reaching deep brain structures non-invasively. OBJECTIVE/HYPOTHESIS: We sought to demonstrate that tFUS can selecti ... Full text Link to item Cite

Ethical commitments, principles, and practices guiding intracranial neuroscientific research in humans.

Journal Article Neuron · January 19, 2022 Leveraging firsthand experience, BRAIN-funded investigators conducting intracranial human neuroscience research propose two fundamental ethical commitments: (1) maintaining the integrity of clinical care and (2) ensuring voluntariness. Principles, practice ... Full text Link to item Cite

Corrigendum: Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Deep Brain Stimulation Think Tank: Advances in Optogenetics, Ethical Issues Affecting DBS Research, Neuromodulatory Approaches for Depression, Adaptive Neurostimulation, and Emerging DBS Technologies (Front. Hum. Neurosci., (2021), 15, (644593), 10.3389/fnhum.2021.644593)

Journal Article Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · October 1, 2021 Wei Hu was not included as an author in the published article. In the original article, we neglected to include the funders NPF and Tyler’s Hope toWei Hu. In the original article, there was an error. A donation was omitted. A correction has been made to th ... Full text Cite

Promises and challenges of human computational ethology.

Journal Article Neuron · July 21, 2021 The movements an organism makes provide insights into its internal states and motives. This principle is the foundation of the new field of computational ethology, which links rich automatic measurements of natural behaviors to motivational states and neur ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Deep Brain Stimulation Think Tank: Advances in Optogenetics, Ethical Issues Affecting DBS Research, Neuromodulatory Approaches for Depression, Adaptive Neurostimulation, and Emerging DBS Technologies

Journal Article Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · April 19, 2021 We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to ... Full text Cite

Boundary-anchored neural mechanisms of location-encoding for self and others.

Journal Article Nature · January 2021 Everyday tasks in social settings require humans to encode neural representations of not only their own spatial location, but also the location of other individuals within an environment. At present, the vast majority of what is known about neural represen ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Stimulation of the right entorhinal white matter enhances visual memory encoding in humans.

Journal Article Brain Stimul · 2021 BACKGROUND: While deep brain stimulation has been successful in treating movement disorders, such as in Parkinson's disease, its potential application in alleviating memory disorders is inconclusive. OBJECTIVE/HYPOTHESIS: We investigated the role of the lo ... Full text Link to item Cite

Wireless Programmable Recording and Stimulation of Deep Brain Activity in Freely Moving Humans.

Journal Article Neuron · October 28, 2020 Uncovering the neural mechanisms underlying human natural ambulatory behavior is a major challenge for neuroscience. Current commercially available implantable devices that allow for recording and stimulation of deep brain activity in humans can provide in ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Deep Brain Stimulation Think Tank: Advances in Neurophysiology, Adaptive DBS, Virtual Reality, Neuroethics and Technology.

Journal Article Front Hum Neurosci · 2020 The Seventh Annual Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) Think Tank held on September 8th of 2019 addressed the most current: (1) use and utility of complex neurophysiological signals for development of adaptive neurostimulation to improve clinical outcomes; (2) Ad ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Progress update from the hippocampal subfields group

Journal Article Alzheimer S and Dementia Diagnosis Assessment and Disease Monitoring · December 1, 2019 Introduction: Heterogeneity of segmentation protocols for medial temporal lobe regions and hippocampal subfields on in vivo magnetic resonance imaging hinders the ability to integrate findings across studies. We aim to develop a harmonized protocol based o ... Full text Cite

A Novel Mobile Tool (Somatomap) to Assess Body Image Perception Pilot Tested With Fashion Models and Nonmodels: Cross-Sectional Study.

Journal Article JMIR Ment Health · October 29, 2019 BACKGROUND: Distorted perception of one's body and appearance, in general, is a core feature of several psychiatric disorders including anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder and is operative to varying degrees in nonclinical populations. Yet, body ... Full text Link to item Cite

Quantitative assessments reveal improved neuroscience engagement and learning through outreach.

Journal Article J Neurosci Res · September 2019 Lack of resources and exposure to neuroscience in K-12 education has resulted in a limited number of K-12 students pursuing higher education in the field. Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of the field of neuroscience has encouraged many higher educational in ... Full text Link to item Cite

Reporting Guidelines and Issues to Consider for Using Intracranial Brain Stimulation in Studies of Human Declarative Memory

Journal Article Frontiers in Neuroscience · December 4, 2018 Participants with stimulating and recording electrodes implanted within the brain for clinical evaluation and treatment provide a rare opportunity to unravel the neuronal correlates of human memory, as well as offer potential for modulation of behavior. Re ... Full text Cite

Enhancing the ecological validity of fMRI memory research using virtual reality

Other Frontiers in Neuroscience · June 15, 2018 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful research tool to understand the neural underpinnings of human memory. However, as memory is known to be context-dependent, differences in contexts between naturalistic settings and the MRI scanner ... Full text Cite

Theta Oscillations in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe during Real-World Ambulatory Movement.

Journal Article Curr Biol · December 18, 2017 The theta rhythm-a slow (6-12 Hz) oscillatory component of the local field potential-plays a critical role in spatial navigation and memory by coordinating the activity of neuronal ensembles within the medial temporal lobe (MTL). Although theta has been ex ... Full text Link to item Cite

Selective neuronal lapses precede human cognitive lapses following sleep deprivation.

Journal Article Nat Med · December 2017 Sleep deprivation is a major source of morbidity with widespread health effects, including increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, heart attack, and stroke. Moreover, sleep deprivation brings about vehicle accidents and medical errors and is the ... Full text Link to item Cite

Theta-burst microstimulation in the human entorhinal area improves memory specificity.

Journal Article Elife · October 24, 2017 The hippocampus is critical for episodic memory, and synaptic changes induced by long-term potentiation (LTP) are thought to underlie memory formation. In rodents, hippocampal LTP may be induced through electrical stimulation of the perforant path. To test ... Full text Link to item Cite

A harmonized segmentation protocol for hippocampal and parahippocampal subregions: Why do we need one and what are the key goals?

Journal Article Hippocampus · January 2017 The advent of high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has enabled in vivo research in a variety of populations and diseases on the structure and function of hippocampal subfields and subdivisions of the parahippocampal gyrus. Because of the many e ... Full text Link to item Cite

Effects of aging on value-directed modulation of semantic network activity during verbal learning.

Journal Article Neuroimage · January 15, 2016 While impairments in memory recall are apparent in aging, older adults show a remarkably preserved ability to selectively remember information deemed valuable. Here, we use fMRI to compare brain activation in healthy older and younger adults during encodin ... Full text Link to item Cite

Specific responses of human hippocampal neurons are associated with better memory.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · August 2015 A population of human hippocampal neurons has shown responses to individual concepts (e.g., Jennifer Aniston) that generalize to different instances of the concept. However, recordings from the rodent hippocampus suggest an important function of these neur ... Full text Cite

High-resolution 7T fMRI of Human Hippocampal Subfields during Associative Learning.

Journal Article J Cogn Neurosci · June 2015 Examining the function of individual human hippocampal subfields remains challenging because of their small sizes and convoluted structures. Previous human fMRI studies at 3 T have successfully detected differences in activation between hippocampal cornu a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Quantitative comparison of 21 protocols for labeling hippocampal subfields and parahippocampal subregions in in vivo MRI: towards a harmonized segmentation protocol.

Journal Article Neuroimage · May 1, 2015 OBJECTIVE: An increasing number of human in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have focused on examining the structure and function of the subfields of the hippocampal formation (the dentate gyrus, CA fields 1-3, and the subiculum) and subregion ... Full text Link to item Cite

Repeating spatial activations in human entorhinal cortex.

Journal Article Curr Biol · April 20, 2015 The ability to remember and navigate spatial environments is critical for everyday life. A primary mechanism by which the brain represents space is through hippocampal place cells, which indicate when an animal is at a particular location. An important iss ... Full text Link to item Cite

Evidence for corticostriatal dysfunction during cognitive skill learning in adolescent siblings of patients with childhood-onset schizophrenia.

Journal Article Schizophr Bull · September 2014 Patients with schizophrenia perform poorly on cognitive skill learning tasks. This study is the first to investigate the neural basis of impairment in cognitive skill learning in first-degree adolescent relatives of patients with schizophrenia. We used fun ... Full text Link to item Cite

Value-based modulation of memory encoding involves strategic engagement of fronto-temporal semantic processing regions.

Journal Article Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci · June 2014 A number of prior fMRI studies have focused on the ways in which the midbrain dopaminergic reward system coactivates with hippocampus to potentiate memory for valuable items. However, another means by which people could selectively remember more valuable t ... Full text Link to item Cite

Deep brain stimulation for enhancement of learning and memory.

Journal Article Neuroimage · January 15, 2014 Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has emerged as a powerful technique to treat a host of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders from Parkinson's disease and dystonia, to depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder (Benabid et al., 1987; Lang and Lozano, ... Full text Link to item Cite

APOE associated hemispheric asymmetry of entorhinal cortical thickness in aging and Alzheimer's disease.

Journal Article Psychiatry Res · December 30, 2013 Across species structural and functional hemispheric asymmetry is a fundamental feature of the brain. Environmental and genetic factors determine this asymmetry during brain development and modulate its interaction with brain disorders. The e4 allele of th ... Full text Link to item Cite

Direct recordings of grid-like neuronal activity in human spatial navigation.

Journal Article Nat Neurosci · September 2013 Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex appear to represent spatial location via a triangular coordinate system. Such cells, which have been identified in rats, bats and monkeys, are believed to support a wide range of spatial behaviors. Recording neuronal act ... Full text Link to item Cite

Percepts to recollections: insights from single neuron recordings in the human brain.

Journal Article Trends Cogn Sci · August 2012 Transformation of experience into memories that can guide future behavior is a common ability across species. However, only humans can declare their perceptions and memories of experienced events (episodes). The medial temporal lobe (MTL) is central to epi ... Full text Link to item Cite

The authors reply

Journal Article New England Journal of Medicine · May 17, 2012 Cite

Memory enhancement and deep-brain stimulation of the entorhinal area.

Journal Article N Engl J Med · February 9, 2012 BACKGROUND: The medial temporal structures, including the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex, are critical for the ability to transform daily experience into lasting memories. We tested the hypothesis that deep-brain stimulation of the hippocampus or en ... Full text Link to item Cite

Fornix damage limits verbal memory functional compensation in multiple sclerosis.

Journal Article Neuroimage · February 1, 2012 Selective atrophy of the hippocampus, in particular the left CA1 subregion, is detectable in relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) and is correlated with verbal memory performance. We used novel high-resolution imaging techniques to assess the role that functional ... Full text Link to item Cite

Gray matter loss correlates with mesial temporal lobe neuronal hyperexcitability inside the human seizure-onset zone.

Journal Article Epilepsia · January 2012 PURPOSE: Patient studies have not provided consistent evidence for interictal neuronal hyperexcitability inside the seizure-onset zone (SOZ). We hypothesized that gray matter (GM) loss could have important effects on neuronal firing, and quantifying these ... Full text Link to item Cite

Project brainstorm: using neuroscience to connect college students with local schools.

Journal Article PLoS Biol · 2012 Neuroscience can be used as a tool to inspire an interest in science in school children as well as to provide teaching experience to college students. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dissociations within human hippocampal subregions during encoding and retrieval of spatial information.

Journal Article Hippocampus · July 2011 Although the hippocampus is critical for the formation and retrieval of spatial memories, it is unclear how subregions are differentially involved in these processes. Previous high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown ... Full text Link to item Cite

Thickness in entorhinal and subicular cortex predicts episodic memory decline in mild cognitive impairment.

Journal Article Int J Alzheimers Dis · March 15, 2011 Identifying subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) most likely to decline in cognition over time is a major focus in Alzheimer's disease (AD) research. Neuroimaging biomarkers that predict decline would have great potential for increasing the effica ... Full text Link to item Cite

Reduced hippocampal CA2, CA3, and dentate gyrus activity in asymptomatic people at genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Journal Article Neuroimage · November 15, 2010 Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies in healthy subjects with the apolipoprotein Eepsilon4 (APOE-4) genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease have shown increased activation during memory task performance in broadly distributed cortical ... Full text Link to item Cite

Family history of Alzheimer's disease and hippocampal structure in healthy people.

Journal Article Am J Psychiatry · November 2010 OBJECTIVE: Structural brain changes appear years before the onset of Alzheimer's disease, the leading cause of dementia late in life. Determining risk factors for such presymptomatic brain changes may assist in identifying candidates for future prevention ... Full text Link to item Cite

Longitudinal changes in medial temporal cortical thickness in normal subjects with the APOE-4 polymorphism.

Journal Article Neuroimage · October 15, 2010 People with the apolipoprotein-Eepsilon4 (APOE-4) genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease show morphologic differences in medial temporal lobe regions when compared to non-carriers of the allele. Using a high-resolution MRI and cortical unfolding approach, ou ... Full text Link to item Cite

Human hippocampal CA1 involvement during allocentric encoding of spatial information.

Journal Article J Neurosci · August 26, 2009 A central component of our ability to navigate an environment is the formation of a memory representation that is allocentric and thus independent of our starting point within that environment. Computational models and rodent electrophysiological recording ... Full text Link to item Cite

Advances in high-resolution imaging and computational unfolding of the human hippocampus.

Journal Article Neuroimage · August 1, 2009 The hippocampus is often a difficult structure to visualize with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional MRI (fMRI) due to its convoluted nature and susceptibility to signal dropout. Improving our ability to pinpoint changes in neural activity usin ... Full text Link to item Cite

Correlation between BOLD fMRI and theta-band local field potentials in the human hippocampal area.

Journal Article J Neurophysiol · May 2009 The relation between the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal, which forms the basis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and underlying neural activity is not well understood. We performed high-resolution fMRI in patients scheduled for i ... Full text Link to item Cite

High-resolution depth electrode localization and imaging in patients with pharmacologically intractable epilepsy.

Journal Article J Neurosurg · April 2008 Localization and targeting of depth electrodes in specific regions of the human brain is critical for accurate clinical diagnoses and treatment as well as for neuroscientific electrophysiological research. By using high-resolution magnetic resonance imagin ... Full text Link to item Cite

Melatonin inhibits hippocampal long-term potentiation.

Journal Article Eur J Neurosci · November 2005 The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of the hormone melatonin on long-term potentiation and excitability measured by stimulating the Schaffer collaterals and recording the field excitatory postsynaptic potential from the CA1 dendritic layer ... Full text Link to item Cite