How Brain Implants Might Help Combat Mental Illness

During his worst stretches of depression, Jon Nelson says he often thought of ending his life. “I can tell you every single tree in my neighborhood in my town that would be the best for me to slam my car into,” he says. “All I thought about was that.”

In the third episode of the Bloomberg Originals series Posthuman, Nelson tells Emily Chang how, after years of trying different medicines to combat his illness, he found a solution: electrodes in his brain. As soon as implants were activated in a medical trial, it was like a “switch was flipped.” Nelson’s story of recovery could soon be more common, as such electronic devices become a new, cutting-edge weapon in the war on depression.