In a series of 13 patients with treatment-resistant depression and significant suicide risk, serial maintenance ketamine infusions helped some achieve long-term functional recovery. Two cases reached functional remission: one sustained response for 7 months through a possible synergy with lamotrigine, and another continued treatment for 5 years—possibly the longest reported. In seven other cases, ketamine acutely reduced suicidal ideation but did not produce lasting antidepressant effects. Factors linked to poor long-term response included inadequate mood stabilization in bipolar spectrum disorders, concurrent benzodiazepine use, complex comorbidities, and adverse effects like severe hypertension or dissociation. Controlled studies are needed to confirm safety and efficacy of long-term ketamine maintenance therapy.
Dream reports from normal subjects cannot reliably identify the individual dreamer. Judges asked to group dream reports by their authors performed at chance levels, indicating that dreams may share more common features than unique signatures. When personal identifiers such as names and gender of friends and family are removed, dream reports do not reveal the dreamer's identity. The findings suggest that beyond using dreams to understand individuals, they also reveal shared or generic aspects of human consciousness.
Emotions felt during dreams are almost always triggered by the characters that appear, and people frequently use those emotions to identify who the characters are. Affection and joy are commonly linked with known characters, even when those emotional associations contradict how the person feels about the same individual while awake. These patterns align with brain activity differences between dreaming and waking states: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which supports short-term memory, is less active during dreaming, while limbic areas involved in emotion are more active and receive minimal input from the prefrontal cortex.