Changes During Weeks in Effects of Tricyclic Drugs on the Human Sleeping Brain

Abstract

The tricyclic antidepressants are established in therapy but not in mode of action. Effects on mouse or rat brain of single and relatively enormous doses provide the basis for theories. Yet it may be inferred that the clinical use of tricyclic antidepressants relies upon an induction of brain changes on a time-scale of weeks. Studies of tricyclic drug actions upon human brain physiology are as scanty as are easily-measurable human brain functions. Electrophysiological techniques, however, can conveniently be applied during one principal brain-state, namely sleep, when there is a relative freedom from uncontrollable extraneous variables.