bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
August 13, 2026
David S Jacobs, Alejandro Torrado Pacheco, Randall Olson et al.
preprint
Emerging clinical research with psilocybin highlights the value of the psychedelic experience on successful treatment of a multitude of psychiatric disorders. While the psychedelic trip or clinical support procedures cannot be modeled in rodents, neural processes critical to meta-learning and flexible modification of previously learned strategies can be quantified during psilocybin exposure....
Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
September 1, 2024
David S Jacobs, Alina P Bogachuk, Chloé L Le Moing et al.
4 citations
Psilocybin may provide a useful treatment for mood disorders including anxiety and depression but its mechanisms of action for these effects are not well understood. While recent preclinical work has begun to assess psilocybin's role in affective behaviors through innate anxiety or fear conditioning, there is scant evidence for its role in conflict between reward and punishment. The current...
The Journal of clinical investigation
June 17, 2024
Alejandro Torrado Pacheco, Bita Moghaddam
3 citations
Psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine have emerged as potentially effective treatments for rapid amelioration of the symptoms of mood and related psychiatric disorders. All clinical data collected so far with regard to psilocybin or MDMA, which have reported positive outcomes for treating depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and drug or alcohol use disorders, have involved...
Neuropsychopharmacology
February 20, 2023
Gabriela Garza, Bita Moghaddam, Alejandro Torrado Pacheco et al.
69 citations
Abstract Psilocybin has been shown to improve symptoms of depression and anxiety when combined with psychotherapy or other clinician-guided interventions. To understand the neural basis for this pattern of clinical efficacy, experimental and conceptual approaches that are different than traditional laboratory models of anxiety and depression are needed. A potential novel mechanism is that acute...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
September 1, 2012
Bita Moghaddam, John H. Krystal
Here, we describe our collaborative efforts to use N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonists as a translational tool to advance our understanding of the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and identify potential new targets for treatment of schizophrenia. We began these efforts in the late 1980s with a keen sense that, in both human and animal studies, we needed to move beyond the dopamine...
Journal of Neuroscience
February 29, 2012
Jesse Wood, Yunbok Kim, Bita Moghaddam
164 citations
In the absence of overt cellular pathology but profound perceptual disorganization and cognitive deficits, schizophrenia is increasingly considered a disorder of neural coordination. Thus, different causal factors can similarly interrupt the dynamic function of neuronal ensembles and networks, in particular in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), leading to behavioral disorganization. The importance of...
October 1, 1999
R. Andrew Chambers, J. Douglas Bremner, Bita Moghaddam et al.
140 citations
Dissociative cognitive and perceptual alterations commonly occur at the time of traumatization and as an enduring feature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After stress exposure, dissociative symptoms are a predictor of the development of PTSD. Recent preclinical data suggest that stress stimulates the cortico-limbic release of glutamate. The glutamate that is released during stress in...
Science
August 28, 1998
Bita Moghaddam, Barbara W. Adams
1,019 citations
Glutamatergic abnormalities have been associated with several psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and addiction. Group II metabotropic glutamate receptors were targeted to normalize glutamatergic disruptions associated with an animal model of schizophrenia, the phencyclidine model. An agonist of this group of receptors, at a dose that was without effects on spontaneous activity and...
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
July 15, 1998
B Adams, Bita Moghaddam
The behavioral syndrome produced by phencyclidine (PCP) and its analog ketamine represents a pharmacological model for some aspects of schizophrenia. Despite the multifaceted properties of these drugs, the main mechanism for their psychotomimetic and cognitive-impairing effects has been thought heretofore to involve the corticolimbic dopamine system. The present study examined the temporal...
Pharmacopsychiatry
July 1, 1998
Walid Abi‐saab, Deepak C D'Souza, Bita Moghaddam et al.
Drug models have been extensively used to study the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. While they provide good insight into the neurobiology of this disorder, they have several shortcomings, which if known, help in the interpretation of results. In this paper we will discuss these shortcomings in general, and in relation to the N-methyl D-aspartate antagonist model for schizophrenia. This model...
Journal of Neuroscience
April 15, 1997
Bita Moghaddam, Barbara W. Adams, Anita Verma et al.
1,813 citations
Subanesthetic doses of ketamine, a noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist, impair prefrontal cortex (PFC) function in the rat and produce symptoms in humans similar to those observed in schizophrenia and dissociative states, including impaired performance of frontal lobe-sensitive tests. Several lines of evidence suggest that ketamine may impair PFC function in part by interacting with...