Deep Brain Stimulation Improves Depression Symptoms: Study

The effects of the therapy in a small group of patients were long-lasting, researchers say, adding to evidence that the approach works for treatment-resistant depression.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Deep brain stimulation can durably improve depression symptoms in people who don’t respond well to other treatments, according to a small study published last week (October 4) in The American Journal of Psychiatry. The findings, based on up to eight years of data from 28 people wearing brain-stimulating implants, showed that most people receiving the therapy responded well and maintained their improvements over time.

“The bottom line is that if you get better, you stay better,” study coauthor Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who holds a share of an intellectual property patent on the therapy, tells The New York Times. “You don’t lose the effects over time. You wear the device like a pacemaker, and you stay well.”

Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, involves implanting a small neurostimulator into a patient’s brain to send out electrical impulses to ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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