A Newly Discovered Brain Signal Marks Recovery from Depression

On February 4, 2019, before he was wheeled into the operating room, Tyler Hajjar, then age 28, hugged his mother and quipped, “It’s just brain surgery.” Hajjar, a resident of Johns Creek, Ga., had traveled to Emory University in Atlanta to outfit his brain with a device that might reset it in hopes of easing the depression that had severely diminished his quality of life—and, at times, threatened that life—for a decade. “Sometimes the best thing I could do was literally just lay in bed all day,” he recalls of his long illness, “but honestly, that was better than anything else that was going through my mind—which would have been irreversible.”

Hajjar wasn’t afraid of the surgery itself—only that it wouldn’t work. More than 20 medications, by his count, hadn’t helped him in any durable way; neither had electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or ketamine infusions […]

BY INGRID WICKELGREN

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