Are morphological changes necessary to mediate the therapeutic effects of 
electroconvulsive therapy?

Nickl-Jockschat, T; Palomero Gallagher, N; Kumar, V; Hoffstaedter, F; Brügmann, E; Habel, U; Eickhoff, SB; Grözinger, M

doi:10.1007/s00406-015-0631-z

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Are morphological changes necessary to mediate the therapeutic effects of electroconvulsive therapy?

MPS-Authors

There are no MPG-Authors in the publication available

External Resource

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0157-z.pdf
(Publisher version)

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Nickl-Jockschat, T., Palomero Gallagher, N., Kumar, V., Hoffstaedter, F., Brügmann, E., Habel, U., et al. (2016). Are morphological changes necessary to mediate the therapeutic effects of electroconvulsive therapy? European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 266(3), 261-267. doi:10.1007/s00406-015-0631-z.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000B-1785-5

Abstract

The neurotrophic hypothesis has become the favorite model to explain the antidepressant properties of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). It is based on the assumption that a restoration of previously defective neural networks drives therapeutic effects. Recent data in rather young patients suggest that neurotrophic effects of ECT might be detectable by diffusion tensor imaging. We here aimed to investigate whether the therapeutic response to ECT necessarily goes along with mesoscopic effects in gray matter (GM) or white matter (WM) in our patients in advanced age. Patients (n = 21, 15 males and 7 females) suffering from major depressive disorder were treated with ECT. Before the start of treatment and after the completion of the index series, they underwent magnetic resonance imaging, including a diffusion-weighed sequence. We used voxel-based morphometry to assess GM changes and tract-based spatial statistics and an SPM-based whole-brain analysis to detect WM changes in the course of treatment. Patients significantly improved clinically during the course of ECT. This was, however, not accompanied by GM or WM changes. This result challenges the notion that mesoscopic brain structure changes are an obligatory prerequisite for the antidepressant effects of ECT.