Anti-depressants could help cerebral function in stroke patients

Scientists in Iowa, US, believe that the use of prescription anti-depressants could hold the key to developing more advanced cerebral functions, including 'outside of the box' thinking.

Strokes affect thousands of elderly people each year and the results of living through one can be devastating as far as mental health is concerned.

Speech patterns, long-term and short-term memory and even a sufferer's personality can all be altered by a stroke, but now researchers believe they have found a way to boost lateral cerebral thinking.

Although the results were not seen immediately, after 21 months of regular use, a group of stroke patients were seen to display improved executive functions.

"We found that people diagnosed with stroke who often have a decline in 'executive function', - that is those mental abilities that enable us to respond appropriately to unfamiliar or complex situations and support several cognitive, emotional and social capacities - showed improvement," said Dr Sergio Paradiso, the study's author.

"We were somewhat surprised to initially not find any difference after the first 12 weeks of treatment," he continued. "It took another 21 months after the initial treatments for the antidepressants to have a detectable effect."

Although there is no hard evidence yet, Dr Paradiso and his team hypothesised that the antidepressants may be reorganising the brain's structure and re-establishing neuronal connections that were lost because of the death of neurons during the stroke.

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