A new study suggests that a single dose of antidepressant can alter the brain's architecture within hours, even though most patients usually don't report improvement for weeks, according to Sci-Tech Today.
The study was conducted on 22 people who had never taken antidepressants. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany first scanned the brains of the participants and selected some of them randomly to take an SSRI, a medication taken for depression.
A magnetic resonance imaging machine was used to compare connections between those who took SSRIs and those who did not, according to Capital Lotc.
The brains of the participants were scanned again after giving SSRI and researchers reportedly found major alteration in the connectivity architecture in the brain, mainly within thalamus and the cerebellum within three hours.
This study shows a contradicting belief to the theory that the benefits of antidepressants usually take a few days to a few months to actually kick in.
"We were not expecting the SSRI to have such a prominent effect on such a short timescale or for the resulting signal to encompass the entire brain," said Julia Sacher from Max Planck Institute of Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
The results of the study, which is published in the journal Current Biology, can help in predicting who would be able to derive the most benefits from taking antidepressants, according to the media outlet. Despite the benefits of the study, there is reportedly the draw back of conducting the study on healthy people because the brain patterns of depressed people are far different from healthy people, according to researchers.
"The findings indicate that compared to subjects who were administered a placebo, the subjects receiving the SSRI exhibited a considerable change in the degree different brain regions (neural networks) communicate," said Paul J. Mattis, PhD., Chief of Adult Neuropsychology at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, NY.
"Although not directly relevant to patients with depression, the study provides a small building block in the substantial task of understanding the brains of patients with depression and other disorders in which serotonin is important," added Mattis.
