Sarah had endured five years of torture from severe and untreatable depression. “Each day I forced myself to resist the suicidal impulses that overtook me several times an hour,” the 36-year-old Californian says.
Then a surgical team at the University of California, San Francisco, inserted a thin wire deep into her brain — and administered a mild electric pulse. “When I first received the stimulation, the ‘aha’ moment occurred,” says Sarah, who wants only to be known by her first name. “I felt the most intensely joyous sensation and my depression was a distant nightmare for a moment.”
After the UCSF scientists had discovered which part of Sarah’s brain was associated with negative feelings and which would respond to a relieving stimulus, they incorporated their findings in a permanent implant that acts like a neural pacemaker. Having worn the device for a year, she reports that it has “kept depression at bay, allowing me to return to my best self and rebuild a life worth living”.