| Sumario: | Reversibility is a much-touted advantage of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) and related neuromodulatory procedures. In the treatment of both motor and psychological disorders, earlier surgical procedures aimed at the permanent ablation of specific brain areas, but DBS, in contrast, does not deliberately seek to destroy brain tissue. For this and other reasons I discuss, DBS is widely described as "reversible", and it this claim of reversibility that is the focus of my essay. I argue that, not only is there no common agreement about what "reversibility" means, there are important respects in which the claim is false, and others in which it is misleading.
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