2024-09-07 15:00:12
“How are you feeling, mom?” »asks about Helen Mayberg’s body language. “Easy”stammers Brandy Ellis, her head covered with a blue sheet. “That’s to say?”the doctor continued. “I feel like the wind is entering my body”replied the patient, lie down.
This conversation was recorded on October 12, 2011, in the operating room of Emory University Hospital, in Atlanta (USA). The medical team invited a thirty-year-old American woman at regular intervals to be placed, under local anesthesia, with a deep brain implant targeting an area of the prefrontal cortex called “CG25”. Brandy Ellis is participating in this pioneering clinical trial because she hopes to improve her major depressive disorder, which has faced around twenty treatments over four years. Operation, curated by Helen Mayberg and made by the neurosurgeon Robert Gross, will last almost six hours and will allow the installation, in addition to the electrode, of the internal circuit connected to the battery under the skin, not far from the right side . This complete system must continuously deliver high-frequency electricity which will keep the environment active as a neutral.
Almost thirteen years later, in Paris, before the Olympic Games. Still carrying the implant, Brandy Ellis, 48, came to share her experience Neurotechnology conference at the Collège de France. Immaculately dressed and well-groomed, she declared that she does not feel anxious every day and that this surgery was the happiest day of her life. “I’m a cyborg, like the injured people from old TV shows who become bionic [en référence à L’Homme qui valait 3 milliards (1973-1978) ou Super Jaimie (1976-1978)] »he added with a smile. A Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduate who became an executive in an international insurance company, however, understands the mask of everyday life that is not easy. In all the questions asked during our conversation, he will answer “I don’t know” again and again, before navigating, on the screen of your smartphone, hundreds of lines listing your own history: your key dates, your treatments, doses received… Your phone even has video clips of the operation soak. “Between March and September 2008, two years before the transplant, I did twenty-four ECV sessions. [électroconvulsivothérapie, ex-électrochocs] »it is specific. “He left his mark. I lost part of my memory. »
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