A brain pacemaker helped a woman with crippling depression. It may soon be available to more people

Hollenbeck demonstrates an EEG device that records brain activity as she reacts to short videos at Mount Sinai’s ‘Q-Lab’ in New York. Kopell says in normal brains electrical activity reverberates unimpeded in all areas, in a sort of dance. In depression, the dancers get stuck within the brain’s emotional circuitry. DBS seems to ‘unstick the circuit’, he says, allowing the brain to do what it normally would. — AP

NEW YORK: Emily Hollenbeck lived with a deep, recurring depression she likened to a black hole, where gravity felt so strong and her limbs so heavy she could barely move. She knew the illness could kill her. Both of her parents had taken their lives.

She was willing to try something extreme: Having electrodes implanted in her brain as part of an experimental therapy.