A study published online on Friday, October 4, 2019 in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that deep brain stimulation (DBS) of an area in the brain called the subcallosal cingulate (SCC) provides a robust anti-depressant effect that is sustained over a long period of time in patients with treatment-resistant depression--the most severely depressed patients who have not responded to other treatments. The article is titled “Long-Term Outcomes of Subcallosal Cingulate Deep Brain Stimulation for Treatment-Resistant Depression.” The long-term data presented in this study, conducted at Emory University and led by Helen S. Mayberg (photo), MD, now Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, Psychiatry, and Neuroscience, and Founding Director of the Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, validates earlier work conducted by the research team and lays the foundation for additional studies to refine and optimize DBS for these patients. Deep brain stimulation, currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat essential tremor, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, is a neurosurgical procedure involving the placement of a neurostimulator (sometimes referred to as a "brain pacemaker"), which sends high-frequency electrical impulses through implanted electrodes deep in the brain to specific brain areas responsible for the symptoms of each disorder. Dr. Mayberg led the first trial of DBS of the subcallosal cingulate white matter, known as Brodmann Area 25, for treatment-resistant depression patients in 2005, demonstrating that it could have clinical benefit.Login Or Register To Read Full Story