I should add that it's much more nuanced and complicated than how I've explained. Along with determining if a functional connection is excitatory or inhibitory,

I should add that it's much more nuanced and complicated than how I've explained. Along with determining if a functional connection is excitatory or inhibitory, you need to ensure its direction as well because functional connections aren't necessarily bidirectional. You also want to be confident in how stimulating the target endpoint will affect the functional connection over time. It may potentially strengthen it (think "training") or weaken it (think "desensitizing"), thus potentially affecting the efficacy of the stimulation over time. As with most scientific fields, knowledge is built up one step at a time and you need to stand upon the shoulders of prior work before producing an application with confidence.