My research explores the electrophysiological, neurobiological, and behavioral correlates to neuromodulation of affective neural circuits. In my independent laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine, I leverage a recent advance in the functional neurosurgery field – the use of stereotactic electroencephalography (sEEG). This clinical method of investigating seizure onset patterns in the brain provides extensive coverage of deep neural structures and white matter fibers that are also critical to emotional functioning. This research platform enables in-vivo studies of the electrophysiological and neural correlates to affective and psychiatrically-relevant neural functions in awake and behaving human participants (NIH K01-MH116364, PI: Bijanki). One important method I have developed is a task examining emotional perceptual bias and its modulation during electrical stimulation of the affective salience network in patients undergoing intracranial monitoring (NIH-R21-NS104953, MPI: Bijanki, Willie). This program of research led to the identification of a novel stimulation-based strategy for evoking positive affect and anxiolysis, for which my team was awarded a United States Patent (US:11,241,575). Our work demonstrated that stimulation to the cingulum bundle evokes changes in anxiolysis, mirth, and euphoria, as well as corresponding changes in emotional perceptual bias (Journal of Clinical Investigation – Cover article). This discovery garnered national and international press coverage and was featured in the NIH Director’s Blog. At Baylor I have also been fortunate to participate in the scientific development of a first-in-human clinical trial of multi-target deep brain stimulation paired with stereo-EEG evaluation for treatment resistant depression. This highly collaborative and interdisciplinary work paved the way for my independent R01 Research Program Grant (NIH R01-MH127006, PI: Bijanki), as well as forming the basis of recent first-author and senior-author publications in Brain, Biological Psychiatry, and Brain Stimulation. Most recently, my team has developed a research project to use explainable artificial intelligence to map the relationship between mood and intracranial neural activity, and to explore naturalistic patterns of intracranial stimulation to engage the circuit (NIH R01-MH128909, MPI: Bijanki, Pitkow, Sheth). The insights afforded by intracranial electrophysiology to identify therapeutic and pathophysiological biomarkers for psychiatric disease have the potential to change the course of treatment and the quality of life of patients.