Synesthesia is associated with additional perceptual experiences, which are automatically and consistently triggered by specific inducing stimuli. Synesthesia is also accompanied by more general sensory and cortical changes, including enhanced modality-specific cortical excitability. Extensive cognitive training has been shown to generate synesthesia-like phenomenology but whether these...
Increasing cannabis consumption among adolescents, studies that link its early use with mental illnesses, and the political debate on cannabis legalization together call for an urgent need to study molecular underpinnings of adolescent brain vulnerability. The emerging role of epigenetic mechanisms in psychiatric diseases led us to hypothesize that epigenetic alterations could play a role in...
Eva Ceskova, Petr Silhan Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic Abstract: In spite of tremendous development in central nervous system research, current treatment is suboptimal, especially in severe mental disorders. In medicine, there are two main methods of improving the health care provided: seeking new treatment procedures and perfecting (optimizing)...
Virtual reality (VR) technology is currently seeing a surge of interest in industry, academia, and the public. Myriad developments are already underway, aiming to bring the technology directly to users\nin ways that offer access to rich virtual multisensory experiences. The immersivity that VR offers is enabled by the brain’s constraints on processing bodily self-consciousness (BSC), which...
Abstract Background Modulation of glutamatergic synaptic transmission by N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors can produce rapid and sustained antidepressant effects. Rapastinel (GLYX-13), initially described as a N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor partial glycine site agonist, exhibits rapid antidepressant effect in rodents without the accompanying dissociative effects of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor...
BACKGROUND: species that is well known for both its potent anti-addictive and neuroprotective properties. Increasing evidence supports the contributions of cAMP response element binding protein (CREB), nuclear receptor-related-1 (Nurr1), and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in modulating neural and behavioral plasticity which was induced by addictive drugs. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the...
PLoS One2018Mónica R Fernández-Cabrera, Alejandro Higuera-Matas, Isabel Fernaud-Espinosa et al.
Derivatives from the Cannabis plant are the most commonly abused illegal substances in the world. The main psychoactive component found in the plant, Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), exerts its effects through the endocannabinoid system. Manipulations of this system affect some types of learning that seem to be dependent on dorsal striatum synaptic plasticity. Dendritic spines exhibit important...
Introduction: Treatment-resistant depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, and L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia in Parkinson's disease are characterized by hypersynchronous neural oscillations. Sub-anesthetic ketamine is effective at treating these conditions, and this may relate to ketamine's capacity to reorganize oscillatory activity throughout the brain. For example, a single...
The classic serotonergic hallucinogens, or psychedelics, have the ability to profoundly alter perception and behavior. These can include visual distortions, hallucinations, detachment from reality, and mystical experiences. Some psychedelics, like LSD, are able to produce these effects with remarkably low doses of drug. Others, like psilocybin, have recently been demonstrated to have...
Adult neurogenesis persists in the rodent dentate gyrus and is stimulated by chronic treatment with conventional antidepressants through BDNF/TrkB signaling. Ketamine in low doses produces both rapid and sustained antidepressant effects in patients. Previous studies have shed light on post-transcriptional synaptic NMDAR mediated mechanisms underlying the acute effect, but how ketamine acts at...