Nitrous oxide ("laughing gas") is an NMDA receptor antagonist. In the current study, our aim was to investigate the efficacy, safety, and likely optimal dose of nitrous oxide in adults with major depressive disorder (MDD). In this phase 2b randomized, double-blind trial, 81 patients with MDD were allocated on a 1:1 basis to receive nitrous oxide or oxygen/air (control); the nitrous group was...
Major depressive disorder negatively impacts the sensitivity and adaptability of the brain's predictive coding framework. The current electroencephalography study into the antidepressant properties of ketamine investigated the downstream effects of ketamine on predictive coding and short-term plasticity in thirty patients with depression using the auditory roving mismatch negativity (rMMN). The...
The rapid-acting clinical effects of ketamine as a novel treatment for depression along with its complex pharmacology have made it a growing research area. One of the key mechanistic hypotheses for how ketamine works to alleviate depression is by enhancing long-term potentiation (LTP)-mediated neural plasticity. The objective of this study was to investigate the plasticity hypothesis in 30...