Pain perception involves somatosensory-discriminative and affective-motivational components, mediated by separate brain circuits. Traditional mouse behavioral assays lack the resolution to disentangle this complexity. Recent studies using subanesthetic ketamine doses in the hot-plate test revealed a dissociation between paw lifts (somatosensory) and bites & licks (affective). In this study, we...
ObjectiveWe investigated the pharmacokinetics of ketamine with special regard to enantiomer‐specific differences.MethodsTen healthy young male volunteers (mean age, 28 ± 4 years; mean weight, 79 ± 11 kg) received racemic ketamine and S(+)‐ketamine in a randomized double‐blind crossover study. Drugs were administered by a computer‐controlled device. Two infusion cycles with linearly increasing...