Animals must balance reward seeking against potential danger, and impairments in such conflict decision-making are common in psychiatric disorders. Here, we examined how chronic corticosterone exposure and ketamine affect conflict behavior in mice by presenting them with a three-compartment conflict task. Three weeks of corticosterone increased conflict levels without inducing anhedonia,...
Hallucinogens, such as lysergic acid diethylamide, act primarily through the 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A (5-HT2A) receptor, but their regulatory mechanisms remain unclear. G protein-coupled receptor 143 (GPR143), an L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA) receptor, modulates specific GPCRs. We examined the role of GPR143 in the action of 5-HT2A receptor agonist 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI)....
Glutamatergic system dysfunction is associated with the pathophysiology of stress-related psychiatric disorders. However, the role of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor GluN2C and GluN2D subunits in the pathophysiology of adverse juvenile experiences remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate the involvement of GluN2C and GluN2D subunits in social behavior impairments in mice exposed to...
Ketamine, an N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, has attracted attention for its acute and sustained antidepressant effects in patients with depression. Hydroxynorketamine (HNK), a metabolite of ketamine, exerts antidepressant effects without exerting ketamine's side effects and has attracted much attention in recent years. However, the detailed pharmacological mechanism of action...
N-Methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) in the brain are influenced by psychoactive drugs such as 2-(2-chlorophenyl)-2-(methylamino)cyclohexan-1-one (ketamine) and its analog 2-(ethylamino)-2-(3-methoxyphenyl)-cyclohexanone (methoxetamine). The recreational methoxetamine use can cause several toxicities and methoxetamine-related deaths have also been reported. Therefore, it has been banned in...
Schizophrenia is one of the foremost psychological illness around the world, and recent evidence shows that inflammation and oxidative stress may play a critical role in the etiology of schizophrenia. Andrographolide is a diterpenoid lactone from Andrographis paniculate, which has shown anti-inflammation and anti-oxidative effects. In this study, we explored whether andrographolide can improve...
The subjective effects of drugs are related to the kinds of feelings they produce, such as euphoria or dysphoria. One of the methods that can be used to study these effects is the drug discrimination procedure. Many researchers are trying to elucidate the mechanisms that underlie the discriminative stimulus effects of abused drugs (e.g., alcohol, psychostimulants, and opioids). Over the past...
We investigated the rapid and sustained antidepressant effects of enantiomers of ketamine in N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor GluN2D subunit knockout (GluN2D-KO) mice. Intraperitoneal administration of ketamine or its enantiomers 10 min before the tail-suspension test exerted significant antidepressant effects on restraint stress-induced depression in both wildtype and GluN2D-KO mice. The...
Sustained exposure to 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine induces the augmentation of exocytotic serotonin release in rat organotypic raphe slice cultures.
Psychostimulants including amphetamines and cocaine, opioids including morphine, and some recreational drugs share the ability to cause drug dependence and addiction. Although these drugs of abuse primarily act on distinct molecular targets, such as monoamine transporters or receptors, they finally converge to common neural pathways. Several lines of evidence suggest that their chronic...
Cannabis consumption may induce psychotic states in normal individuals, worsen psychotic symptoms of schizophrenic patients, and may facilitate precipitation of schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals. Recent studies provide additional biological and genetic evidence for the cannabinoid hypothesis of schizophrenia. Examinations using [3H]CP-55940 or [3H]SR141716A revealed that the density of...