Rats Are People Too

The only reason I'm not mocking the idea that rats act helpless when they're depressed (gotta love biological psychiatry, eh?) is because I would love dearly for this treatment to be real.

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MRI Scans Could Have Antidepressant Effect -Study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - High-speed magnetic resonance imaging scans produce effects in rats similar to the use of antidepressants, confirming observations made in human patients, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
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"We found that when we administered the magnetic stimulation to the rats, we saw an antidepressant-like effect, the same effect as seen after administration of standard antidepressant drugs," said William Carlezon, director of McLean's Behavioral Genetics Laboratory.

Writing in the journal Biological Psychiatry, Carlezon and colleagues said they tested the rats after another team at the hospital reported a new type of magnetic resonance imaging, called echo planar magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (EP-MRSI), had improved the mood of people in the depressed phase of bipolar disorder.

The new study was designed "to see if we could demonstrate in an animal model what the clinicians thought they were seeing in humans," Carlezon said.

When repeatedly stressed, rats develop helpless behavior, which may be their version of despair, the researchers said. But in the experiment, the rats that had been exposed to EP-MRSI showed less helplessness during the stress tests.
"They behaved as if they had received an antidepressant," said Dr. Bruce Cohen, psychiatrist in chief at McLean.

"It's a non-drug way to change the firing of nerve cells," Cohen said. "That's why the implications of this work have the potential to be so profound."

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