Frontal circuits play a critical role in motor, cognitive and affective processing, and their dysfunction may result in a variety of brain disorders. However, exactly which frontal domains mediate which (dys)functions remains largely elusive. We studied 534 deep brain stimulation electrodes implanted to treat four different brain disorders. By analyzing which connections were modulated for optimal therapeutic response across these disorders, we segregated the frontal cortex into circuits that had become dysfunctional in each of them. Dysfunctional circuits were topographically arranged from occipital to frontal, ranging from interconnections with sensorimotor cortices in dystonia, the primary motor cortex in Tourette’s syndrome, the supplementary motor area in Parkinson’s disease, to ventromedial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Our findings highlight the integration of deep brain stimulation with brain connectomics as a powerful tool to explore couplings between brain structure and functional impairments in the human brain.

额叶回路在运动、认知和情感处理中发挥着关键作用，其功能障碍可能导致多种大脑疾病。然而，究竟哪些额叶区域介导哪些（功能障碍）功能仍然在很大程度上难以捉摸。我们研究了植入的 534 个深部脑刺激电极，用于治疗四种不同的脑部疾病。通过分析哪些连接被调节以获得针对这些疾病的最佳治疗反应，我们将额叶皮层分为每种疾病中已变得功能失调的回路。功能失调的回路按地形排列，从枕叶到额叶，范围从肌张力障碍中与感觉运动皮层的互连、抽动秽语综合征中的初级运动皮层、帕金森病中的辅助运动区，到强迫症中的腹内侧前额叶和前扣带皮层。我们的研究结果强调了深部脑刺激与脑连接组学的整合，作为探索人脑大脑结构和功能损伤之间耦合的有力工具。