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Focused ultrasound, a groundbreaking treatment, lets doctors perform brain surgery without a scalpel. The non-invasive procedure has been used to treat Parkinson’s and other conditions, and now shows promise for treating drug addiction, per Wired.

A sorely needed solution

• Nearly 45m Americans met the criteria for a substance use disorder in 2025.
• While drug overdose deaths have declined for the past three years, there were nearly 70k deaths in 2025.

Neurosurgeon Ali Rezai, a pioneer of deep brain stimulation, saw an opportunity to develop new treatments for drug addiction at the epicenter of the opioid epidemic, West Virginia.

While deep brain stimulation — used to treat Parkinson’s, OCD, traumatic brain injury, and addiction — involves cutting into a patient’s skull to implant electrodes, focused ultrasound targets the same area without the cutting. The outpatient procedure could take just 20 minutes.

To address addiction, Dr. Rezai and his team at West Virginia University focus on the behavioral regulation, anxiety, and craving portions of the brain.

Buckle up, future brain surgeons:

• Focused ultrasound machines emit dozens of beams through a helmet-like device into the skull.
• Waves are targeted with millimeter precision and converge on the nucleus accumbens, zapping the region of the brain that highly addictive drugs like opioids flood with dopamine.
• Patients view images of substances through special goggles, and the ultrasound resets the nucleus accumbens, breaking the connection the brain made with the drugs.

While the treatment is still in its infancy, many patients reported reduced cravings and sustained abstinence.

Dr. Rezai hopes to expand treatment access, and the team is testing a portable device that looks like a salon hair dryer. They’re also testing the treatment for binge eating disorder and want to adapt it for dogs with anxiety.

Focused ultrasound in Silicon Valley

While still highly experimental, numerous tech companies are ultra-focused on focused ultrasound:

• Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam’s Nudge
• Sam Altman’s Merge Labs
• Mary Lou Jepsen’s Openwater

• Sanmai Technologies, backed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman

And they’re not alone.

Maybe you could be a brain surgeon after all. Though there’s still that whole medical school thing.

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If you dream of becoming a brain surgeon, but the idea of cutting open someone’s noggin makes you squeamish, there’s still hope for you.

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