bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
July 20, 2026
Neil K. Savalia, Ling-Xiao Shao, Cory A. Knox et al.
SUMMARY How psychedelics act on cortical dendrites to produce long-lasting structural plasticity remains poorly understood. Here, we characterize the effects of psilocybin on dendritic calcium dynamics in pyramidal tract neurons of the mouse medial frontal cortex. Psilocybin transiently increases calcium event rates in apical dendritic tufts over a time course that parallels the drug’s...
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
April 17, 2026
Pasha A. Davoudian, Quan Jiang, Cory A. Knox et al.
Psychedelics show therapeutic potential for treating psychiatric disorders. While studies have emphasized the roles of cortical pyramidal cells, GABAergic neurons also express serotonin receptors and are therefore likely targets of psychedelics. In this study, we determine the effect of psilocybin on the activity dynamics of major GABAergic cell types in the mouse medial frontal cortex....
Cell
December 5, 2025
Quan Jiang, Ling-Xiao Shao, Shenqin Yao et al.
15 citations
Psilocybin holds promise as a treatment for mental illnesses. One dose of psilocybin induces structural remodeling of dendritic spines in the medial frontal cortex in mice. The dendritic spines would be innervated by presynaptic neurons, but the sources of these inputs have not been identified. Here, using monosynaptic rabies tracing, we map the brain-wide distribution of inputs to frontal...
Nature
June 1, 2025
Ling-Xiao Shao, Clara Liao, Pasha A. Davoudian et al.
75 citations
Psilocybin is a serotonergic psychedelic with therapeutic potential for treating mental illnesses1-4. At the cellular level, psychedelics induce structural neural plasticity5,6, exemplified by the drug-evoked growth and remodelling of dendritic spines in cortical pyramidal cells7-9. A key question is how these cellular modifications map onto cell-type-specific circuits to produce the...
Nature Communications
February 12, 2025
Farid Aboharb, Pasha A. Davoudian, Ling-Xiao Shao et al.
19 citations
Psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA are psychoactive compounds that exert behavioral effects with distinguishable but also overlapping features. The growing interest in using these compounds as therapeutics necessitates preclinical assays that can accurately screen psychedelics and related analogs. We posit that a promising approach may be to measure drug action on markers of neural plasticity in...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
November 3, 2024
Ling-Xiao Shao, Clara Liao, Pasha A. Davoudian et al.
preprint
Abstract Psilocybin is a serotonergic psychedelic with therapeutic potential for treating mental illnesses 1–4 . At the cellular level, psychedelics induce structural neural plasticity 5,6 , exemplified by the drug-evoked growth and remodeling of dendritic spines in cortical pyramidal cells 7–9 . A key question is how these cellular modifications map onto cell type-specific circuits to produce...
bioRxiv
May 26, 2024
Farid Aboharb, Pasha A. Davoudian, Ling-Xiao Shao et al.
preprint
Psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA are psychoactive compounds that exert behavioral effects with distinguishable but also overlapping features. The growing interest in using these compounds as therapeutics necessitates preclinical assays that can accurately screen psychedelics and related analogs. We posit that a promising approach may be to measure drug action on markers of neural plasticity in...
ACS Chemical Neuroscience
January 11, 2023
Ling-Xiao Shao, Pasha A. Davoudian, Alex C. Kwan
131 citations
Psilocybin is a psychedelic with therapeutic potential. While there is growing evidence that psilocybin exerts its beneficial effects through enhancing neural plasticity, the exact brain regions involved are not completely understood. Determining the impact of psilocybin on plasticity-related gene expression throughout the brain can broaden our understanding of the neural circuits involved in...
2023
Ling-Xiao Shao, Clara Liao, Ian Gregg et al.
To determine effects of psychedelics on neuronal architecture, we used two-photon microscopy to image dendritic spines in mouse frontal cortex after administering psilocybin (Neuron, 109, 2535, 2021) and compared with other psychoactive drugs.
Neuron
July 5, 2021
Ling-Xiao Shao, Clara Liao, Ian Gregg et al.
589 citations
Summary Psilocybin is a serotonergic psychedelic with untapped therapeutic potential. There are hints that the use of psychedelics can produce neural adaptations, although the extent and time scale of the impact in a mammalian brain are unknown. In this study, we used chronic two-photon microscopy to image longitudinally the apical dendritic spines of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in the mouse...
Trends in Neurosciences
December 21, 2020
Neil K. Savalia, Ling-Xiao Shao, Alex C. Kwan
110 citations
Pilot studies have hinted that serotonergic psychedelics such as psilocybin may relieve depression, and could possibly do so by promoting neural plasticity. Intriguingly, another psychotomimetic compound, ketamine, is a fast-acting antidepressant and induces synapse formation. The similarities in behavioral and neural effects have been puzzling because the compounds target distinct molecular...