Helen Mayberg, M.D., FRCPCNobel Conference 47

Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology and Dorothy Fuqua Chair of Psychiatric Neuroimaging and Therapeutics, Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neurology, Emory University School of Medicine, and Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, Atlanta, Ga.

Dr. Helen Mayberg’s research focuses on neural systems mediating mood and emotions in health and disease, with a primary emphasis on major depression and its recovery. Her studies have built a foundation for the refinement and continued testing of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for treatment-resistant depression.

Mayberg is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A. in psychobiology, 1976). She undertook graduate study in radiological sciences at the University of California, Irvine, before enrolling at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, where she earned her M.D. in 1981. After interning in internal medicine at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and in neurology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, she joined Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Md., as a research fellow and faculty member in the Division of Nuclear Medicine. In 1999, following seven years on the faculty of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, she was named the first director of the Sandra Rotman Program in Neuropsychiatry at the Rotman Research Institute of the University of Toronto. She moved to the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Ga., in 2004, where she is now on the faculties of the departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and of Neurology. She also maintains an adjunct clinical appointment at the University of Toronto’s Western Hospital and is an associate of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, a consortium of six universities located in Atlanta.

The author or co-author of more than 130 research papers, Mayberg has also participated in the development of television and radio programs for the BBC, CBC Radio, CBS Television, Discovery TV, and NPR.