- Electro-convulsive therapy involves electric shock being undergone cortex from the brain
By Emily Allen
Released: 19:28 GMT, 19 March 2012
Researchers have recently discovered how certainly one of psychiatry's most questionable remedies might help patients with severe depression.
Scientists at Aberdeen College have found that ECT - or electro-convulsive therapy - affects the way in which various areas of the mind involved with depression 'communicate' with one another.
They discovered that the therapy seems to 'turn down' an over active link between regions of the mind that control mood including parts accountable for thinking and focusing.
The questionable ECT treatment has been around since 1938 by an Italian specialist Ugo Cerletti. A nurse is pictured utilizing it on the patient in 1951
This stops the overwhelming impact that depression is wearing sufferers' capability to enjoy normal existence and continue with day-to-day activities.
This reduction in connectivity observed after ECT treatment was supported with a significant improvement within the patient's depressive signs and symptoms.
The ECT treatment, that is 75-years-old, involves an electrical shock being undergone the cortex of the seriously-depressed patient to 'cure' them.
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The questionable treatment has been around since 1938 by an Italian specialist Ugo Cerletti, who had been allegedly inspired by watching pigs being stunned with electric shock prior to being butchered in Rome. The creatures would get into seizures and fall lower, which makes it simpler to slit their throats.
At that time psychological orthodoxy held - wrongly - that schizophrenia and epilepsy were antagonistic and something couldn't appear in the existence of another.
Determining to test the stunning technique on his patients, Dr Cerletti found electric shocks towards the mind triggered his most obsessive and hard mental patients being meek and workable.
Researchers found the therapy 'turns down' an over active link between regions of the mind that control mood including parts employed for thinking
Later the therapy was discovered to be good at dealing with severe depression nevertheless its mode of action has continued to be so far an entire mystery.
The research involved using MRI to scan the brains of nine seriously depressed patients pre and post ECT, after which using entirely new and sophisticated mathematical analysis to research brain connectivity.
Professor of Psychiatry in the college Ian Reid, who is another consultant mental health specialist in the Royal Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen, stated: 'We believe we have solved a 70 years old therapeutic riddle.
'ECT is really a questionable treatment, and something prominent critique continues to be that it's not understood how it operates and just what it will towards the brain.
'For all of the debate surrounding ECT, it is among the best remedies not only to psychiatry however in the entire of drugs, because 75 percent to 85 percent of patients get over their signs and symptoms.
'Over the past few years there's been a growing new perspective how depression affects the mind.
ECT's graphic portrayal within the 1975 film One Travelled Within the Cuckoo's Next won Jack Nicholson an Oscar
'This theory has recommended a 'hyper-connection' between your regions of the mind involved with emotional processing and mood change including parts from the brain involved with thinking and focusing.
'Our key finding is when you compare the connections within the brain pre and post ECT, ECT reduces this 'hyper-connectivity'.
'For the very first time we are able to indicate something which ECT does within the brain which makes sense poor our opinion is wrong in those who are depressed.'
Although ECT is very effective, it is just utilized on individuals who need treatment rapidly: individuals who're very seriously depressed, who're in danger from taking their very own lives, and possibly cannot take care of themselves, or individuals who haven't taken care of immediately other remedies.
Professor Reid stated: 'The treatment also affects memory, though for many patients this really is short-resided.
'However when we understand much more about how ECT works, we are inside a stronger position to replace it all with something less invasive and much more acceptable.
'At as soon as no more than 40 percent of individuals with depression improve with treatment using their GP.
'Our findings can lead to new drug targets which match the potency of ECT with no effect on memory.'
Professor Christian Schwarzbauer, chair in neuroimaging at Aberdeen, who devised the maths accustomed to analyse the information, stated: 'We could discover how much greater than 25,000 different brain areas 'communicated' with one another.
'The method could be relevant to an array of other brain disorders for example schizophrenia, autism, or dementia, and can lead to a much better knowledge of underlying disease systems and the introduction of new diagnostic tools.'
The team's findings are released within the journal Proceedings from the Nas.
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