An MRI might cheer you up
Reuters, Friday, 11 March 2005

Scans may cause other effects we don't yet understand, say researcher, who are calling for renewed caution in the use of high-speed MRIs . A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan can have the same effect as antidepressants, say researchers, whose findings in rats confirm previous observations made in humans.

Dr William Carlezon of Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital in Massachusetts and team say their findings, reported in the journal Biological Psychiatry, suggest that electromagnetic fields can affect brain biology. "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," say the researchers.

Carlezon and team tested the rats after another team at the same 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," says Carlezon.

"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."