Single dose of antidepressant changes brain
1 Dose of Antidepressant Changes Brain Connections? Researchers eventually hope to predict who will respond to a drug and who won't By Deepak Kumar THURSDAY, Sept. 18, 2014 Just a single dose of a common antidepressant can quickly alter the way brain cells communicate with one another, early research suggests. The findings, reported online Sept. 18 in Current Biology , are a step toward better understanding the brain's response to widely prescribed antidepressants. Experts said the hope is to eventually be able to predict which people with depression are likely to benefit from a drug -- and which people would fare better with a different option. In a small study of healthy volunteers, researchers found that a single dose of the antidepressant escitalopram (Lexapro) seemed to temporarily reduce "connectivity" among clusters of brain cells in most regions of the brain. The exceptions were two brain areas -- the cerebellum and thalamus -- where t