"Previous studies have shown that antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy both activate neural stem cells in the adult brain to divide and form new neurons," says Hongjun Song, Ph.D., a professor of neurology and director of the Stem Cell Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Institute for Cell Engineering. "What were missing were the specific molecules linking antidepressant treatment and stem cell activation."To make that link, Song's team and its collaborators assembled a body of evidence from different types of experiments. In one, they compared gene activity in the brains of mice that had and had not been treated with electroconvulsive therapy, looking specifically at genes with protein products that are known to regulate neural stem cells. The comparison turned up differences in the activity of one inhibitor gene for a chemical chain reaction that had been previously implicated in stimulating neural stem cells. Specifically, the therapy reduced the amount of protein the inhibitor gene, sFRP3, produced, which would in turn have given the growth-stimulating chain reaction freer rein.
The article also noted that exercise facilitates this process.