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Cassandra Wojtasiewicz

5 papers in the library · 154 citations · publishing 2024-2025

Papers

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Psilocybin's lasting action requires pyramidal cell types and 5-HT2A receptors.

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...

Classification of psychedelics and psychoactive drugs based on brain-wide imaging of cellular c-Fos expression

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...

Structural neural plasticity evoked by rapid-acting antidepressant interventions.

Nature reviews. Neuroscience February 1, 2025 Clara Liao, Alisha N Dua, Cassandra Wojtasiewicz et al. 60 citations

A feature in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD), a mood disorder, is the impairment of excitatory synapses in the prefrontal cortex. Intriguingly, different types of treatment with fairly rapid antidepressant effects (within days or a few weeks), such as ketamine, electroconvulsive therapy and non-invasive neurostimulation, seem to converge on enhancement of neural...

Pyramidal cell types and 5-HT 2A receptors are essential for psilocybin’s lasting drug action

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...

Classification of psychedelic drugs based on brain-wide imaging of cellular c-Fos expression

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...