Introducing stimulogenetics, unraveling pertinent semantic ambiguity, and determining clinical relevance among novel neuromodulation strategies

Deep brain stimulation involving the stereotactic implantation of electrodes in the deeper neural tissue remains one of the most trusted nonpharmacotherapeutic approaches for neuromodulation in the clinical setting. The recent advent of techniques that can modulate the neural structure and/or function at the cellular level has stimulated the exploration of these strategies in managing neurological and psychiatric disorders. Optogenetics, which is widely employed in experimental research, is the prototype of the above techniques. Other methods such as chemogenetics, sonogenetics, and magnetogenetics have also been introduced. Although these strategies possess several noticeable differences, they have an overlapping conceptual framework enabling their classification under a singular hypernym. This article introduces this hypernym, “stimulogenetics” in an attempt to solve the pertinent ambiguity to aid the classification of existing literature. The article also compares the strategies classified under stimulogenetics and concludes that the current literature suggests that nonsurgical approaches such as chemogenetics and sonogenetics are better suited for clinical applications. However, due to the dearth of clinical studies, it is not possible to determine this definitively.