Patients with treatment-resistant depression showed rapid improvement after electrodes were inserted at a site in the medial forebrain — a region associated with motivation and reward.

Of the seven patients who received deep brain stimulation, Volker Coenen at University Hospital Freiburg, Germany, and his colleagues report that six responded — measured by a common scale of depression — within days. This response is much faster than the many weeks required for an antidepressant effect in other pilot studies in which researchers targeted other sites in the same brain region and used a higher current. However, the authors say that their results are preliminary and need to be confirmed in larger, controlled studies.

Biol. Psychiatry http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.01.034 (2013)