New treatment modalities for mental illness are deeply needed, and emerging therapeutic agents such as psychedelics, ketamine, and neuromodulatory technologies have been welcomed by many researchers and patients. These treatment approaches have also been observed to raise novel ethical questions, and to pose new and different versions of familiar ethical questions in clinical treatment and...
The vast majority of treatments for psychiatric and substance use disorders take weeks to work. Notable exceptions to this rule exist, with some treatments such as intravenous ketamine resolving symptoms in minutes to hours. Current research is focused on identifying novel approaches to rapid-acting psychotherapeutics. Promising results from studies of novel classes of drugs and innovative...
We begin by summarizing several examples of antidepressants whose therapeutic actions begin when they encounter their targets in the cytoplasm or in the lumen of an organelle. These actions contrast with the prevailing view that most neuropharmacological actions begin when drugs engage their therapeutic targets at extracellular binding sites of plasma membrane targets-ion channels, receptors,...
Neurotrophic factors are a family of growth factors that modulate cellular growth, survival, and differentiation. For many decades, it has been generally believed that a lack of neurotrophic support led to the decreased neuronal synaptic plasticity, death, and loss of non-neuronal supportive cells seen in neuropsychiatric disorders. Traditional psychiatric medications that lead to immediate...
Polydrug use patterns among young adults using ecstasy vary, as well as their willingness to change them. Polydrug use patterns are likely associated with different adverse health outcomes. It is unknown whether polydrug use patterns of young adults who use ecstasy are similar in different countries. This study aims to identify and compare polydrug use patterns and willingness to change them of...
Frontiers in Psychiatry2024Gianna Capodilupo, Raymond Blattner, Anita Must et al.3 citations
Despite the development of many successful pharmaceutical interventions, a significant subset of patients experience treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Ketamine and its derivatives constitute a novel therapeutic approach to treat TRD; however, standard tools, such as the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) are still being used to measure symptoms and track changes. The aim of...
To investigate mechanisms underlying loss of consciousness, it is important to extend methods established in humans to rodents as well. Perturbational complexity index (PCI) is a promising metric of "capacity for consciousness" and is based on a perturbational approach that allows inferring a system's capacity for causal integration and differentiation of information. These properties have been...
Musical hallucination is a rare perceptual phenomenon wherein individuals hear music in the absence of external auditory stimuli. This phenomenon occurs across diverse medical conditions and can be triggered by some drugs. The underlying mechanism of drug-induced hallucination is unknown. This study explores drug-induced musical hallucination through a literature review, aiming to investigate...
Neuroplasticity is characterized by the brain's ability to change its activity in response to extrinsic and intrinsic factors and is thought to be the mechanism behind all brain functions. Neuroplasticity causes structural and functional changes on a molecular level, specifically the growth of different regions in the brain and changes in synaptic and post-synaptic activities. The four types of...
Frontiers in Psychiatry2024Jonathan Martin Flintoff, Suzy Alexander, James Paul Kesby et al.3 citations
Although schizophrenia is associated with a broad range of symptoms including hallucinations, delusions, and reduced motivation, measures of cognitive dysfunction, including cognitive flexibility and executive function, are the strongest predictors of functional outcomes. Antipsychotic medications are useful for reducing psychotic symptoms, but they are ineffective at improving cognitive...