Helen S. Mayberg was born in 1956 in California. She is an American neurologist. Mayberg is known in particular for her work delineating abnormal brain function in patients with major depression using functional neuroimaging. This work led to the first pilot study of deep brain stimulation (DBS), a reversible method of selective modulation of a specific brain circuit, for patients with treatment-resistant depression. As of August 2019, she has published 211 original peer-reviewed articles, 31 books and book chapters, and acted as principal investigator on 24 research grants. Mayberg is coinventor with Andres Lozano of “Method for Treating Depression Mood Disorders and Anxiety Disorders using Neuromodulation,” US patent 2005/0033379A1. St. Jude Medical Neuromodulation licensed her intellectual property to develop Subcallosal Cingulate Deep Brain Stimulation for Treatment-Resistant Unipolar and Bipolar Depression (SCC DBS) for the treatment of severe depression. As of 2018, Mayberg holds positions as Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery and Professor, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, both at Mount Sinai Medical School, and Professor of Psychiatry, Emory University; Emory University Hospital. Since 2018, she has served as Director, Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Research Mayberg's research in neurology came about through observations that the psychological diagnoses of mental disorders was not aided by, or backed up by, neurological evidence—and that developing a system of mapping the circuitry of brain activity would allow for more objective diagnoses and treatment. Mayberg studies depression and integrates neuroimaging strategies such as Positron emission tomography (PET), sMRI, fMRI, DTI, and EEG as well as behavioral and psychophysiological metrics to define brain mechanisms and testing of antidepressant treatments. She develops imaging biomarkers and algorithms that discriminate patient subgroups and optimize treatment selection in the management of individual patients across all stages of illness. She also concentrates on testing deep brain stimulation for treatment resistant depression, bringing together electro physiologists, engineers, imaging scientists and clinicians to refine, optimize and extend the treatment of depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Since the 1990s, electric stimulation of parts of the brain have been used to treat Parkinsons. The origins of DBS date back to the 1930s. One deep brain stimulation treatment for depression, developed by Mayberg and colleagues, placed electrodes in the Broadmann area 25 of the brain in severely depressed patients. Initial results were encouraging, though clinical trials were deemed futile and ultimately halted; however, there were positive changes