Neuropsychopharmacology
February 1, 2026
Dongsun Park, Gwangho Lee, Bokyum Kim et al.
1 citation
Ketamine has emerged as a rapid-acting antidepressant that challenges classical monoaminergic frameworks and highlights the importance of synaptic and circuit-level plasticity in mood regulation. This review examines the hippocampus as a key site through which ketamine exerts both rapid and sustained antidepressant effects. We synthesize evidence showing that ketamine enhances hippocampal...
Molecular Psychiatry
July 7, 2025
Dongsun Park, Gwangho Lee, Won-Gyu Lee et al.
7 citations
Major depressive disorder is a debilitating condition, with many patients unresponsive to conventional monoaminergic antidepressants. Rapid-acting antidepressants such as ketamine and psilocybin offer promising alternatives, relieving symptoms within hours. Ketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, and psilocybin, a serotonergic psychedelic primarily targeting 5-HT2A receptors, both enhance...
Science
May 8, 2025
Z Zack Ma, Natalie J Guzikowski, Ji-Woon Kim et al.
44 citations
Repeated ketamine treatment to maintain a rapid antidepressant effect can lead to side effects over time, highlighting an unmet clinical need for sustaining this drug's antidepressant action from a single administration. Ketamine-induced synaptic potentiation at CA3-CA1 synapses has been proposed to be a key synaptic substrate for antidepressant action. Here, we found that ketamine-induced...
Neuropsychopharmacology
November 1, 2024
Ji-Woon Kim, Benjamin Kleinfelter, Ege T Kavalali et al.
3 citations
Prevailing hypotheses on the mechanisms of antidepressant action posit that antidepressants directly counteract deficiencies in major neurotransmitter signaling systems that underlie depression. The rapidly acting antidepressant ketamine has been postulated to correct excess glutamatergic signaling via glutamatergic antagonism leading to the rescue of neuronal structural deficits and reversal...
Annual Review of Medicine
September 20, 2023
Ji-Woon Kim, Kanzo Suzuki, Ege T Kavalali et al.
105 citations
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of suicide in the world. Monoamine-based antidepressant drugs are a primary line of treatment for this mental disorder, although the delayed response and incomplete efficacy in some patients highlight the need for improved therapeutic approaches. Over the past two decades, ketamine has shown rapid onset with sustained (up to several days)...
Trends in molecular medicine
March 1, 2023
Ji-Woon Kim, Kanzo Suzuki, Ege T Kavalali et al.
Acute (R,S)-ketamine (ketamine) administration produces rapid antidepressant effects that in some patients can be sustained for several days to more than week. Ketamine blocks NMDA receptors to elicit specific downstream signaling that induces a novel form of synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus that has been linked to the rapid antidepressant action. These signaling events lead to subsequent...