bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
March 10, 2026
Gabriele Floris, Sarah J. Jefferson, Jocelyne Rondeau et al.
Abstract New treatments for depression are needed that combine robust efficacy with improved scalability. Although psilocybin has demonstrated antidepressant effects in Phase 3 clinical trials, some of its psychedelic effects limit tolerability, necessitating administration in highly supervised clinical settings, and thus motivating development of serotonergic therapeutics that preserve...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
March 8, 2026
Nitzan Geva, Sarah J. Jefferson, Emi Krishnamurthy et al.
Abstract Fear extinction requires dynamic updating of cortical representations, yet the neural mechanisms underlying successful extinction remain poorly understood. Some psychoactive substances induce structural plasticity in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), possibly underlying their therapeutic potential. Here we investigated whether MDMA, which enhances fear extinction, induces prefrontal...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
November 27, 2023
John H. Krystal, Alfred P. Kaye, Sarah J. Jefferson et al.
66 citations
Ketamine has emerged as a transformative and mechanistically novel pharmacotherapy for depression. Its rapid onset of action, efficacy for treatment-resistant symptoms, and protection against relapse distinguish it from prior antidepressants. Its discovery emerged from a reconceptualization of the neurobiology of depression and, in turn, insights from the elaboration of its mechanisms of action...
Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
August 1, 2023
Sarah J. Jefferson, Ian Gregg, Mark Dibbs et al.
57 citations
Serotonergic psychedelics are gaining increasing interest as potential therapeutics for a range of mental illnesses. Compounds with short-lived subjective effects may be clinically useful because dosing time would be reduced, which may improve patient access. One short-acting psychedelic is 5-MeO-DMT, which has been associated with improvement in depression and anxiety symptoms in early phase...