Neuropsychopharmacology
April 2017
Erin K Kirschmann, Michael W Pollock, Vidhya Nagarajan et al.
Use of marijuana (Cannabis sativa) often begins in adolescence, and heavy adolescent marijuana use is often associated with impaired cognitive function in adulthood. However, clinical reports of long-lasting cognitive deficits, particularly in subjects who discontinue use in adulthood, are mixed. Moreover, dissociating innate differences in cognitive function from cannabis-induced deficits is...
Neuropsychopharmacology
February 14, 2017
Ishan C Walpola, Timothy Nest, Leor Roseman et al.
50 citations
Recent work with noninvasive human brain imaging has started to investigate the effects of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) on large-scale patterns of brain activity. MDMA, a potent monoamine-releaser with particularly pronounced serotonin- releasing properties, has unique subjective effects that include: marked positive mood, pleasant/unusual bodily sensations and pro-social, empathic...
Neuropsychopharmacology
August 2016
Digavalli V Sivarao, Ping Chen, Arun Senapati et al.
Schizophrenia patients exhibit dysfunctional gamma oscillations in response to simple auditory stimuli or more complex cognitive tasks, a phenomenon explained by reduced NMDA transmission within inhibitory/excitatory cortical networks. Indeed, a simple steady-state auditory click stimulation paradigm at gamma frequency (~40 Hz) has been reproducibly shown to reduce entrainment as measured by...
Neuropsychopharmacology
July 2016
Margaret Haney, Robert J Malcolm, Shanna Babalonis et al.
Cannabidiol (CBD), a constituent of cannabis with few psychoactive effects, has been reported in some studies to attenuate certain aspects of Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) intoxication. However, most studies have tested only one dose of CBD in combination with one dose of oral THC, making it difficult to assess the nature of this interaction. Further, the effect of oral CBD on smoked cannabis...
Neuropsychopharmacology
June 1, 2016
Patrick C. Dolder, Yasmin Schmid, Felix Müller et al.
249 citations
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is used recreationally and has been evaluated as an adjunct to psychotherapy to treat anxiety in patients with life-threatening illness. LSD is well-known to induce perceptual alterations, but unknown is whether LSD alters emotional processing in ways that can support psychotherapy. We investigated the acute effects of LSD on emotional processing using the Face...
Neuropsychopharmacology
June 2016
Stephanie M. Gorka, K Luan Phan, Maryssa Lyons et al.
Behavioral and brain research indicates that administration of Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) alters threat perception and enhances the suppression of conditioned fear responses via modulation of the frontolimbic circuit. No prior studies, however, have examined whether THC also affects volitional forms of emotion processing such as cognitive reappraisal. The aim of the current study was...
Neuropsychopharmacology
March 1, 2016
Elena H Chartoff, Shayla R Ebner, Angela Sparrow et al.
Negative affective states can increase the rewarding value of drugs of abuse and promote drug taking. Chronic cocaine exposure increases levels of the neuropeptide dynorphin, an endogenous ligand at kappa opioid receptors (KOR) that suppresses dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and elicits negative affective states upon drug withdrawal. However, there is evidence that the effects...
Neuropsychopharmacology
January 2016
Eugene A. Kiyatkin, Suelynn E Ren, Ken T. Wakabayashi et al.
MDMA-induced hyperthermia is highly variable, unpredictable, and greatly potentiated by the social and environmental conditions of recreational drug use. Current strategies to treat pathological MDMA-induced hyperthermia in humans are palliative and marginally effective, and there are no specific pharmacological treatments to counteract this potentially life-threatening condition. Here, we...
Neuropsychopharmacology
December 1, 2015
Michael S. Placzek, Genevieve C Van de Bittner, Hsiao‐ying Wey et al.
Monitoring changes in opioid receptor binding with positron emission tomography (PET) could lead to a better understanding of tolerance and addiction because altered opioid receptor dynamics following agonist exposure has been linked to tolerance mechanisms. We have studied changes in kappa opioid receptor (KOR) binding availability in vivo with PET following kappa opioid agonist...
Neuropsychopharmacology
December 2015
Corey T Watson, Henrietta Szutorisz, Paras Garg et al.
Drug exposure during critical periods of development is known to have lasting effects, increasing one's risk for developing mental health disorders. Emerging evidence has also indicated the possibility for drug exposure to even impact subsequent generations. Our previous work demonstrated that adolescent exposure to Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive component of marijuana...
Neuropsychopharmacology
August 2015
Jose A Cortes-Briones, Patrick D. Skosnik, Daniel H. Mathalon et al.
Gamma (γ)-band oscillations play a key role in perception, associative learning, and conscious awareness and have been shown to be disrupted by cannabinoids in animal studies. The goal of this study was to determine whether cannabinoids disrupt γ-oscillations in humans and whether these effects relate to their psychosis-relevant behavioral effects. The acute, dose-related effects of...
Neuropsychopharmacology
March 5, 2015
Sarah A. Stuart, Paul Butler, Marcus R. Munafò et al.
73 citations
The biochemical targets for antidepressants are relatively well established, but we lack a clear understanding of how actions at these proteins translate to clinical benefits. This study used a novel rodent assay to investigate how different antidepressant drugs act to modify affective biases that have been implicated in depression. In this bowl-digging task, rats encounter two equal value...
Neuropsychopharmacology
December 2014
Patrick D. Skosnik, Giri P Krishnan, Deepak C D'Souza et al.
Previous work in animals and humans has shown that exogenous cannabinoids disrupt time-locked, evoked gamma oscillations (30-80 Hz). However, no studies to date have examined the effect of cannabis on non-time-locked, induced gamma oscillations during more complex Gestalt perception. The current study therefore utilized electroencephalography (EEG) to examine gamma oscillations during coherent...
Neuropsychopharmacology
June 1, 2014
Jean-Baptiste Eichenlaub, Alain Nicolas, Jérôme Daltrozzo et al.
Dreaming is still poorly understood. Notably, its cerebral underpinning remains unclear. Neuropsychological studies have shown that lesions in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and/or the white matter of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) lead to the global cessation of dream reports, suggesting that these regions of the default mode network have key roles in the dreaming process (forebrain...
Neuropsychopharmacology
June 2014
Matthew G. Kirkpatrick, Royce Lee, Margaret C. Wardle et al.
MDMA (± 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, 'ecstasy') is used recreationally, reportedly because it increases feelings of empathy, sociability, and interpersonal closeness. One line of evidence suggests that MDMA produces these effects by releasing oxytocin, a peptide involved in social bonding. In the current study, we investigated the acute effects of MDMA and oxytocin on social and emotional...
Neuropsychopharmacology
May 2014
Henrietta Szutorisz, Jennifer A DiNieri, Eric Sweet et al.
Recent attention has been focused on the long-term impact of cannabis exposure, for which experimental animal studies have validated causal relationships between neurobiological and behavioral alterations during the individual's lifetime. Here, we show that adolescent exposure to Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive component of cannabis, results in behavioral and...
Neuropsychopharmacology
December 2013
Shigeyuki Yamamoto, Hiroyuki Ohba, Shingo Nishiyama et al.
Subanesthetic doses of ketamine, an N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) antagonist, have a rapid antidepressant effect which lasts for up to 2 weeks. However, the neurobiological mechanism regarding this effect remains unclear. In the present study, the effects of subanesthetic doses of ketamine on serotonergic systems in conscious monkey brain were investigated. Five young monkeys underwent four...
Neuropsychopharmacology
November 1, 2013
Hendrik Wesseling, Man K Chan, T M Tsang et al.
Current schizophrenia (SCZ) treatments fail to treat the broad range of manifestations associated with this devastating disorder. Thus, new translational models that reproduce the core pathological features are urgently needed to facilitate novel drug discovery efforts. Here, we report findings from the first comprehensive label-free liquid-mass spectrometry proteomic- and proton nuclear...
Neuropsychopharmacology
June 2013
Emma Puighermanal, Arnau Busquets-García, Maria Gomis-Gonzalez et al.
The potential therapeutic benefits of cannabinoid compounds have raised interest in understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie cannabinoid-mediated effects. We previously showed that the acute amnesic-like effects of delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) were prevented by the subchronic inhibition of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway. In the present study, we assess the...
Neuropsychopharmacology
May 24, 2013
Michael B. Gatch, Alexey Kozlenkov, Ren-Qi Huang et al.
Anecdotal reports have surfaced concerning misuse of the HIV antiretroviral medication efavirenz ((4S)-6-chloro-4-(2-cyclopropylethynyl)-4-(trifluoromethyl)-2,4-dihydro-1H-3,1-benzoxazin-2-one) by HIV patients and non-infected teens who crush the pills and smoke the powder for its psychoactive effects. Molecular profiling of the receptor pharmacology of efavirenz pinpointed interactions with...
Neuropsychopharmacology
September 2012
Patrick D. Skosnik, Deepak C D'Souza, Adam B. Steinmetz et al.
Animal and cellular work has shown that central cannabinoid-1 receptors modulate neural oscillations in the gamma range (40 Hz), which may be important for normal perceptual and cognitive processes. In order to assess the effect of cannabinoids on broadband-frequency neural oscillations in humans, the current study examined the effect of chronic cannabis use on auditory steady-state responses...
Neuropsychopharmacology
June 2012
Deepak Cyril D'Souza, Daniel J Fridberg, Patrick D. Skosnik et al.
Cannabinoids induce a host of perceptual alterations and cognitive deficits in humans. However, the neural correlates of these deficits have remained elusive. The current study examined the acute, dose-related effects of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ⁹-THC) on psychophysiological indices of information processing in humans. Healthy subjects (n=26) completed three test days during which they...
Neuropsychopharmacology
May 2012
Christopher D. Verrico, Shijing Liu, Elizabeth J Bitler et al.
Among adolescents, the perception that cannabis can cause harm has decreased and use has increased. However, in rodents, cannabinoid administration during adolescence induces working memory (WM) deficits that are more severe than if the same exposure occurs during adulthood. As both object and spatial WM mature in a protracted manner, although apparently along different trajectories, adolescent...
Neuropsychopharmacology
March 2012
André Schmidt, Rosilla Bachmann, Michael Kometer et al.
Psychotomimetics like the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist ketamine and the 5-hydroxytryptamine2A receptor (5-HT(2A)R) agonist psilocybin induce psychotic symptoms in healthy volunteers that resemble those of schizophrenia. Recent theories of psychosis posit that aberrant encoding of prediction errors (PE) may underlie the expression of psychotic symptoms. This study used a...
Neuropsychopharmacology
February 2012
Jatin G Vaidya, Robert I Block, Daniel S O'Leary et al.
Marijuana (MJ) acutely acts on cannabinoid receptors that are found in numerous brain regions, including those involved in reward processing and decision-making. However, it remains unclear how long-term, chronic MJ use alters reward-based decision-making. In the present study, using [(15)O]water PET imaging, we measured brain activity in chronic MJ users, who underwent monitored abstinence...