Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
2023
Hector Vargas-Perez, Taryn Elizabeth Grieder, Derek van der Kooy
Aberrant glutamatergic signaling has been closely related to several pathologies of the central nervous system. Glutamatergic activity can induce an increase in neural plasticity mediated by brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a nodal point in the mesolimbic dopamine system. Recent studies have related BDNF dependent plasticity in the VTA with the...
Neuropsychopharmacology
2023
Abigail E. Calder, Gregor Hasler
303 citations
Classic psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin, and the DMT-containing beverage ayahuasca, show some potential to treat depression, anxiety, and addiction. Importantly, clinical improvements can last for months or years after treatment. It has been theorized that these long-term improvements arise because psychedelics rapidly and lastingly stimulate neuroplasticity. The focus of this review is...
Journal of Clinical Investigation
December 15, 2022
Q. Ru, Yungang Lu, Ali Bin Saifullah et al.
Chronic pain often leads to depression, increasing patient suffering and worsening prognosis. While hyperactivity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) appears to be critically involved, the molecular mechanisms underlying comorbid depressive symptoms in chronic pain remain elusive. T cell lymphoma invasion and metastasis 1 (Tiam1) is a Rac1 guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) that...
Journal of Neuroscience
November 1, 2022
Steven F. Grieco, Eero Castrén, Gitte M. Knudsen et al.
83 citations
Psychedelic drugs have reemerged as tools to treat several brain disorders. Cultural attitudes toward them are changing, and scientists are once again investigating the neural mechanisms through which these drugs impact brain function. The significance of this research direction is reflected by recent work, including work presented by these authors at the 2022 meeting of the Society for...
Neuroscience
October 1, 2022
Mengke Zhang, Dongbin Lyu, Fan Wang et al.
Major depressive disorder is a burdensome condition with few treatment options, and traditional antidepressants are characterized by slow onset. Sub-anesthetic ketamine has rapid-onset effects for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD), the mechanisms of which remain elusive. In this study, we explored whether neuroplasticity, autophagy, and ferroptosis in the habenular nucleus are...
Molecules
September 1, 2022
Rosa Estrada-Reyes, Daniel B Quero-Chávez, Salvador Alarcón-Elizalde et al.
Melatonin (MEL), an indolamine with diverse functions in the brain, has been shown to produce antidepressant-like effects, presumably through stimulating neurogenesis. We recently showed that the combination of MEL with ketamine (KET), an NMDA receptor antagonist, has robust antidepressant-like effects in mice, at doses that, by themselves, are non-effective and have no adverse effects. Here,...
Scientific Reports
June 30, 2022
Jacopo Lamanna, Francesco Isotti, Mattia Ferro et al.
Unpredictable chronic mild stress (CMS) is among the most popular protocols used to induce depressive-like behaviors such as anhedonia in rats. Differences in CMS protocols often result in variable degree of vulnerability, and the mechanisms behind stress resilience are of great interest in neuroscience due to their involvement in the development of psychiatric disorders, including major...
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
June 28, 2022
Antonio Inserra, Antonella Campanale, David Cheishvili et al.
39 citations
AimPsychedelic compounds elicit relief from mental disorders. However, the underpinnings of therapeutic improvement remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated the effects of repeated lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on whole-genome DNA methylation and protein expression in the mouse prefrontal cortex (PFC).MethodsWhole genome bisulphite sequencing (WGBS) and proteomics profiling of the...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
April 25, 2022
M. J. Kang, Emily R. Hawken, Gustavo Vazquez
The mechanism of action underlying ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects in patients with depression, both suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD), including treatment resistant depression (TRD), remains unclear. Of the many speculated routes that ketamine may act through, restoring deficits in neuroplasticity may be the most parsimonious mechanism in both...
Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
April 12, 2022
Giovanna Ponte, Cinzia Chiandetti, David B. Edelman et al.
It is only in recent decades that subjective experience - or consciousness - has become a legitimate object of scientific inquiry. As such, it represents perhaps the greatest challenge facing neuroscience today. Subsumed within this challenge is the study of subjective experience in non-human animals: a particularly difficult endeavor that becomes even more so, as one crosses the great...