How would a 'normal' brain react to electric shock therapy?

I do as well! I also believe in the Queen in Alice in Wonderland ”” if you beat a child when he is bad to make him good, beat a child when he is good to make him better””

I was reading about it a few weeks ago because I was surprised it was still in use and figured I was missing something.

My gut says if they used it on “normal” brains it would be found that current techniques are damaging and it would probably go the way of leeches.

That’s not to say there isn’t some shred of good in there that can be studied and hopefully used, but it sounds pretty much like beating someone over the head with an electric hammer until they’re unconscious. Occasionally something good will happen, but you’re not sure why, and you’d never sign up for it.

So you save it as a last resort, like slapping the side of your TV, and just hoping the signal gets better.

If we started slapping all the TVs whether they had a problem or not, we’d find out that it has an equal chance of helping or hurting, but finding the real problem and addressing it directly is a lot more effective.

Really??? Is this barbaric practice still used today?!?!

Long-term memory is a function of brain structure.
Electricity melts the metal filaments of fuses.
Combine those two facts to see what happens to any brain that is electrocuted.

In other words, it’s like a lobotomy, only far less precise.

Yes, it’s still used. The office next to me is a neurologist and I get to hear it once in a while. It’s pretty freaky. One of the patients is a woman I went to school with and she seems ok after it.

Shock therapy has been refined over the years and is a legitimit therapy. I’m guessing it would have a good effect on a so called well person. There must be trials on relatively nomal people done but I don’t know where to find them.

I have a relative who has gone through two rounds of electroconvulsive therapy—ECT aka “shock” therapy. She is OK now, but for the first year or so after her round I saw her take, she was a mess. Her memory was shot. Not just her short term, but her long term as well. Her behavior was also off. She’d stand around for hours in her bathrobe in the middle of the afternoon and not notice that she hadn’t moved for hours—or that she was improperly dressed. When I talked to her, she’d forget what she was saying in the middle of a sentence and she just didn’t seem with it.

It’s been a few years later and she’s mostly back to normal now. She’s much less depressed and happier than she was before the ECT. She’s also still a bit spacy and forgetful, but nowhere near as bad as it was during and after the treatments.

While ECT has vastly improved since the 60s, it’s still not precise and most likely never will be. Every brain as a different and unique way of processing information. And while they are better at targeting specific areas, it still damages parts of our frontal lobes, which is the “human” part of our brain where things like language and creative thought are. The damage done is now small enough that it’s fairly easy for most brains to recover.

Even though the damage is now minimal, you really aren’t quite the same afterwards. I would only want to go through that treatment as a last resort when nothing else worked. I don’t think the benefits would outweigh the year of disorganization your brain goes through to repair itself.

I have know depressed people for whom it has been very useful. Although it sounds barbaric, it can be helpful as a last resort. As to its effect on a so-called “normal” brain, I don’t know.

ECT is a gift for some people who suffer badly from depression. They request it because it is the one thing that gives them quick relief from severe symptoms. It is used regularly in many behavioral hospitals in the US. Patients consent to it.

I think a normal brain would suffer memory loss like the depressed brain does. I also think the normal person would be very very frustrated after ECT that memory had been taken from them, and it would actually probably cause some mental difficulty having to deal with a loss of control. Emotions like sadness, resisting to accept the circumstance, regret.

The normal person would feel worse after ECT, while the depressed person feels better, because everything is relative.

That’s my guess.

My grandma had this done a few decades ago, (she now lays virtually unresponsive in a nursing home) to be honest, I’m not sure what the effects were. I come from quite a line of mental illness – on both sides of my family.

“bzzzzzzz”

It is not something that I would have done unless it was absolutely the only treatment option left.

What it does is deliberately induce a tonic seizure.

There has just been a lot of research done which shows long-term and permanent damage. I would think that that damage would occur in the normal brain with no benefit to counteract it:
“It was his ‘07 study that also showed global cognitive impairment in all forms of ECT, including the most benign. (citation needed for study.) Some studies have found that patients are often unaware of cognitive deficits induced by ECT.[54 The study documented substantial cognitive impairment after ECT on a variety of memory tests, including “verbal memory for word lists and prose passages and visual memory of geometric designs.” In this first-ever large-scale study (347 subjects), Sackeim and colleagues found that at least some forms (namely bilateral application and outdated sine-wave currents) of ECT “routine[ly]” lead to “adverse cognitive effects,” including global cognitive deficits and memory loss, that persist for up to six months after treatment, suggesting that the induced deficits may be permanent.In July 2007, a second study was published concluding that ECT routinely leads to chronic, substantial cognitive deficits, and the findings were not limited to any particular forms of ECT. A study published in 2004 in the Journal of Mental Health reported that 35 to 42% of patients responding to a questionnaire reported ECT resulted in loss of intelligence.” Woko[edia

I have a cousin in her mid-eighties with a good life, great husband and kids, two degrees, a wonderful career, good looks and no money problems. In the past twenty years she has had two depressions that ware so debilitating that finally, in desperation, she chose ECT.

It worked perfectly for her both times.

I know a number of people who have undergone it, and I have spoken with doctors who employ the therapy on their bipolar patients.

The way I understand it, those of us with bipolar disorder have differences in the way our brain chemistry works. The neurotransmitters show up out of phase, and as a result, we get depressed and suicidal, as well as all the manic symptoms like paranoia and hallucinations and whatnot.

In order to fix us, they need to get chemistry sequence back in proper order. They have a number of tools to do this with. There are a number of places in the process where they can intervene in order to reset the process.

Electroshock induces a kind of seizure, which is like stopping the mental/chemical process entirely, with the hope that when it restarts, it can restart the proper way. It’s similar to what they do to folks whose hearts are not beating properly. The shock stops the heart and then they hope it will start in the correct sequence.

Just as with hearts, brains also don’t always restart properly, so they have to try it again or give up on the therapy. But it does work on occasion. And when it works, it does a really good job.

The problem is that you never know who it will work on because all of us are different and they don’t know how to predict these things yet. We just don’t know enough about brains. So they have to try it and see.

Electroshock should do exactly the same thing to a regular brain as it does to a maladjusted brain. It’s stop it and we hope it’ll start up in the proper sequence again. It is the same if you stopped and started a normal heart. You’d hope it would start up properly.

But they might not start up properly. This is why doctors say, “first, do no harm.” You never treat someone who doesn’t need treating. Not if you’re an ethical practitioner.

There is no predicting how a “normal” brain would react to electroshock. It seems likely that there would be the memory effects that others have discussed. It is also possible the brain might get moved into improper functioning. They could end up with their brain chemistry out of phase.

Uh, that was supposed to be Wikipedia.

@marinelife And I thought you had a discovered a new and very effective reference source!

To echo what several people above said, ECT is highly effective in some people with otherwise intractable depression, but memory loss is a common side effect. There is no reason to believe it would be different in a person without depression.

I am not sure about the thing about ADD meds. I believe stimulant drugs have been shown to have the same effects in all people (blocking dopamine reuptake and/or increasing its release to increase attention and motivation).

When I was in Walter Reed, the staff said that though didn’t know what was so different about the procedures, ECT and EST are significantly different.

ECT is used normally on severely depressed people and is sort of (as one doc put it) CTRL ALT DEL for the brain, sorta reboots it. (Also memory loss tends to be no longer than roughly 36 hours worth)

EST is for more severe cases and not necessarily just depression. They said that normally it was for those who were having a severe nervous breakdown or were suffering from extreme bouts of manic like behavior. Memory loss is guaranteed and seems to be roughly about four months worth. (Sounds like a prolonged session of ECT, but they made it clear to us to not get these two confused and for those who asked for one or the other [yes, you may ask for a session of either] they made sure you knew what you were asking for)

@King_Pariah Iwas also under the impression – from a friend of mine who had it – that the memory loss was temporary.

@janbb I wouldn’t know, but for the 6 weeks I was in, I never saw anyone recover that which was lost.