Abstract #3289

Hippocampal Alterations in Congenital Learned Helpless Rats After Electroconvulsive Seizures Detected with in Vivo 1H MR-Spectroscopy at 9.4T

Sarah Biedermann¹, Sascha Sartorius¹, Lei Zheng^1,2, Barbara Vollmayr³, Peter Gass³, Gabriele Ende⁴, Wolfgang Weber-Fahr¹

¹RG Translational Imaging, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany; ²Medical Faculty of Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany; ³RG Research Group Behavioral Biology, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany; ⁴Department Neuroimaging, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany

Psychiatric patients suffer from the time-delayed onset of antidepressive treatments. Electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) has a more rapid acting onset of the antidepressive effect. With the help of high field 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopy at 9.4 T we examined congenital learned helpless (cLH) rats hippocampi after a six days course of ECS. We found a significant increase in choline, glutamate and GABA concentrations after ECS. The increase of glutamate correlated significantly with an increase of GABA. Glutamine was unaltered by ECS. These results support the hypothesis of ECS induced neurogenesis and increased synaptic plasticity.