Frontiers in Psychiatry
August 11, 2026
Ngo Cheung
Quantum approaches to consciousness remain controversial, partly because any putative quantum state in the brain is expected to decohere rapidly in a warm, hydrated, and noisy environment. The present manuscript does not attempt to solve that biological problem directly. Instead, it treats microtubule-related interpretation as a deliberately hypothetical analogy and asks a narrower Level-A...
Cureus
July 1, 2026
Hoi Ki Cheung, Ngo Cheung
A 16-year-old post-pubertal female presented with mixed anxiety-depressive symptoms, prominent obsessive rumination, relationship-centered guilt, reassurance-seeking, fantasy intrusions, and difficulty separating fantasy from reality during periods of distress. Baseline scores were in the moderate range for depression and severe range for anxiety, with a Patient Health Questionnaire-9 score of...
Cureus
June 1, 2026
Hoi Ki Cheung, Ngo Cheung
A proportion of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) continue to experience disabling symptoms despite standard serotonergic treatment, antipsychotic augmentation, and psychological input. Contamination-focused OCD can be especially persistent when rituals are embedded in the home environment and reinforced by family patterns. Recent work has drawn attention to glutamatergic...
Cureus
May 1, 2026
Ngo Cheung
Trauma-related dissociation can present with derealisation, depersonalisation, abrupt lapses in awareness, memory gaps, and fugue-like states, and it may be difficult to treat with standard approaches alone. Glutamatergic interventions have been proposed as neuroplasticity-focused strategies because N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonism and downstream...
Figshare
April 14, 2026
Ngo Cheung
The hard problem of consciousness, together with the expectation that quantum states should decohere rapidly in the warm and noisy brain, has long challenged quantum approaches to mind, including the orchestrated objective reduction framework. Even so, recent reports of room-temperature superradiance and long-range energy migration in tryptophan networks within microtubules have kept open the...
Figshare
April 11, 2026
Ngo Cheung
How subjective experience arises from brain activity remains one of the central unsolved problems in neuroscience. Orchestrated objective reduction, or Orch-OR, proposes that consciousness may depend in part on quantum computation within neuronal microtubules, but this proposal has long been criticized on the grounds that the brain’s warm, wet environment should destroy such states almost...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
January 19, 2026
Ngo Cheung
1 citation
Background: Major depressive disorder involves impaired neural plasticity, yet antidepressants targeting glutamatergic (ketamine), monoaminergic (SSRIs), and GABAergic (neurosteroids) pathways differ markedly in onset speed, durability, and risk of treatment-emergent mania—particularly in bipolar contexts. Clinical comparisons are confounded by heterogeneity; computational models enable...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
January 14, 2026
Ngo Cheung
1 citation
Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is increasingly framed as a failure of neuroplasticity. Excessive synaptic pruning in adolescence can leave circuits fragile; later stress then unmasks the weakness, whereas ketamine and related compounds can quickly rebuild critical synapses. Clinical data show that a single treatment often gives short relief, while repeated courses reduce relapse....
Frontiers in Psychiatry
2026
Ngo Cheung
6 citations
Rapid-acting antidepressants show that mood can lift within hours when glutamatergic circuits shift from an "NMDA-dominant" to an "AMPA-dominant" state. Intravenous ketamine achieves this flip but is hampered by dissociation and logistics, while dextromethorphan + bupropion (Auvelity®) primarily supplies the initial NMDA blockade and yields slower, less durable benefit. We hypothesize that a...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
2026
Ngo Cheung
Traditional monoaminergic medications often offer limited relief for the physical and cognitive symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD. Growing data now point to fast-acting, glutamate-based treatments that boost synaptic plasticity and interrupt fear-conditioned neural circuits. We report four sequential cases of hard-to-treat trauma-spectrum disorders-somatic PTSD,...
Preprints.org
December 22, 2025
Ngo Cheung
1 citation
preprint
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) remains treatment-resistant in 40–60 % of patients despite optimised serotonin-reuptake inhibitor therapy and antipsychotic augmentation. Emerging evidence points to glutamatergic dysregulation in cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuits as a core driver of rigid, maladaptive synaptic patterns. The Cheung Glutamatergic Regimen (CGR)—a fully oral, low-cost...
Preprints.org
December 5, 2025
Ngo Cheung
preprint
Background: Bipolar disorder secondary to traumatic brain injury (TBI) is common, mechanistically distinct, and notoriously treatment-resistant. Rapid-acting glutamatergic antidepressants such as ketamine are effective in bipolar depression but remain inaccessible to most patients.Case presentation: We describe a woman in her mid-thirties with documented right frontal atrophy after a severe...
Preprints.org
December 2, 2025
Ngo Cheung
1 citation
preprint
Intranasal esketamine has proven its worth for patients whose depression will not yield to standard medicines, yet the realities of cost and clinic-based monitoring bar many people from long-term use. The situation is especially frustrating for those who respond spectacularly to a first dose only to watch the benefits fade when they can no longer afford repeat treatments.That was the...
Preprints.org
November 28, 2025
Ngo Cheung
6 citations
preprint
Intravenous ketamine has transformed the care of refractory mood and anxiety disorders, yet its cost and clinical complexity keep many patients on the sidelines. The Cheung glutamatergic regimen tries to bring the same rapid-acting biology to the outpatient clinic with nothing more exotic than pharmacy-shelf capsules. The protocol pairs dextromethorphan, whose σ-1/NMDA activity mirrors...
Ngo Cheung
preprint
Cognitive impairment—rather than psychosis or mood instability—often drives long-term disability in schizoaffective disorder, yet current antipsychotic and mood-stabilising regimens offer little relief. We describe a 22-year-old man with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, whose persistent "brain fog" jeopardised university graduation despite euthymic mood and quiescent psychosis on...