Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology
2026
Manfred Klöbl, Thomas Liebe, Gregor Dörl et al.
Ketamine, a well-established antidepressant and dissociative anesthetic, is also used recreationally in the club and chemsex scene. Survey and qualitative data suggest that while ketamine facilitates chemsex encounters, it diminishes the intensity of the sexual experience. To investigate this phenomenon from a neuroscientific perspective while considering ketamine's sex-specific effects. Two...
PLoS Computational Biology
October 28, 2025
Fernando Lehue, Carlos Coronel-Oliveros, Vicente Medel et al.
1 citation
Sleep onset is characterized by a departure from arousal, and can be separated into well-differentiated stages: NREM (which encompasses three substages: N1, N2 and N3) and REM (Rapid Eye Movement). Awake brain dynamics are maintained by various wake-promoting mechanisms, particularly the neuromodulators Acetylcholine (ACh) and Noradrenaline (NA), whose levels naturally decrease during the...
The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology
June 6, 2025
Benjamin Spurny-Dworak, Thomas Liebe, Samantha Graf et al.
2 citations
The N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist ketamine has found broad application in the field of psychiatry. Due to its rapid antidepressant and anti-suicidal properties, it is used as a treatment for major depressive disorder. Furthermore, ketamine evokes dissociative and psychotropic states, which allows the modeling of schizophrenic symptoms. The thalamus, a main target for ketamine's...
The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology
June 1, 2024
Thomas Liebe, Lena Vera Danyeli, Zümrüt Duygu Sen et al.
5 citations
The NMDA antagonist S-ketamine is gaining increasing use as a rapid-acting antidepressant, although its exact mechanisms of action are still unknown. In this study, we investigated ketamine in respect to its properties toward central noradrenergic mechanisms and how they influence alertness behavior. We investigated the influence of S-ketamine on the locus coeruleus (LC) brain network in a...