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Although electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is both the most- and best-studied treatment in psychiatry, its mechanism of action remains unclear. Researchers in Sweden studied electroconvulsive seizures (ECS), which are an animal model of ECT, to determine their effect on neurogenesis in the hippocampus.
Rats received ECS once, a series of ECS for 5 or 10 days, or sham ECS. Compared with sham ECS, active ECS had two kinds of effects in specific regions of the hypothalamus: the supraoptic nucleus, the paraventricular nucleus, and the ventromedial nucleus. In these regions, a single session of ECS activated neurons, as measured by induction of the early gene c-Fos, and endothelial cells proliferated significantly in animals receiving 5 ECS treatme…