Mayberg was familiar with these advances and thought that slowing the firing rate of neurons in area 25 might relieve the symptoms of depression. She used deep-brain stimulation in the anterior insula region to treat twenty-five people whose depression was resistant to treatment. She collaborated with a team of neurosurgeons, first at the University of Toronto and then at Emory, who implanted the electrodes. When she turned on the electricity in the operating room, she saw almost immediate changes in the patients’ mood. The patients no longer felt the unending psychic pain characteristic of
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