Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
February 2018
Henrietta Szutorisz, Yasmin L. Hurd
Extensive debates continue regarding marijuana (Cannabis spp), the most commonly used illicit substance in many countries worldwide. There has been an exponential increase of cannabis studies over the past two decades but the drug's long-term effects still lack in-depth scientific data. The epigenome is a critical molecular machinery with the capacity to maintain persistent alterations of gene...
Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience
2018
Allie J Widman, Amy E Stewart, Elise M Erb et al.
In the past 20 years, ketamine has become a promising treatment for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) due to its rapid and sustain antidepressant effects in patients. A single ketamine treatment causes improvement in depressive symptoms within hours and can last weeks, long after it is eliminated. Previous studies have demonstrated increased synaptic plasticity at CA3-CA1 synapses in hippocampus...
Brain and Neuroscience Advances
2018
Bolton K H Chau, Kati Keuper, Mandy M Lo et al.
Neuroplastic underpinnings of meditation-induced changes in affective processing are largely unclear. We included healthy older participants in an active-controlled experiment. They were involved a meditation training or a control relaxation training of eight weeks. Associations between behavioral and neural morphometric changes induced by the training were examined. The meditation group...
Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
2018
Farah Chamaa, Hisham F Bahmad, Ahmad-Kareem Makkawi et al.
The identification of distinct and more efficacious antidepressant treatments is highly needed. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is an N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) antagonist that has been reported to exhibit antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant depression (TRD) patients. Yet, no studies have investigated the effects of sub-anesthetic dosages of N2O on hippocampal cell proliferation and...
Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience
December 19, 2017
Franciele F Scarante, Carla Vila-Verde, Vinícius L Detoni et al.
Exposure to stressful situations is one of the risk factors for the precipitation of several psychiatric disorders, including Major Depressive Disorder, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Schizophrenia. The hippocampal formation is a forebrain structure highly associated with emotional, learning and memory processes; being particularly vulnerable to stress. Exposure to stressful stimuli leads to...
Scientific Reports
December 15, 2017
Selen Atasoy, Leor Roseman, Mendel Kaelen et al.
225 citations
Recent studies have started to elucidate the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on the human brain but the underlying dynamics are not yet fully understood. Here we used 'connectome-harmonic decomposition', a novel method to investigate the dynamical changes in brain states. We found that LSD alters the energy and the power of individual harmonic brain states in a frequency-selective...
Scientific Reports
October 13, 2017
Robin Carhart-Harris, Leor Roseman, Mark Bolstridge et al.
590 citations
Psilocybin with psychological support is showing promise as a treatment model in psychiatry but its therapeutic mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, cerebral blood flow (CBF) and blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after treatment with psilocybin (serotonin agonist) for...
Scientific Reports
October 9, 2017
Vanja Dakic, Juliana Minardi Nascimento, Rafaela Costa Sartore et al.
137 citations
Dimethyltryptamines are entheogenic serotonin-like molecules present in traditional Amerindian medicine recently associated with cognitive gains, antidepressant effects, and changes in brain areas related to attention. Legal restrictions and the lack of adequate experimental models have limited the understanding of how such substances impact human brain metabolism. Here we used shotgun mass...
Addiction Biology
September 2017
Nancy Stanslowsky, Kirsten Jahn, Anna Venneri et al.
Among adolescents cannabis is one of the most widely used illicit drugs. In adolescence brain development continues, characterized by neuronal maturation and synaptic plasticity. The endocannabinoid system plays an important role during brain development by modulating neuronal function and neurogenesis. Changes in endocannabinoid signaling by Δ9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive...
Biological Psychiatry
September 1, 2017
Wallace C. Duncan, Elizabeth E. Slonena, Nadia S. Hejazi et al.
The rapid clinical antidepressant effects of the glutamatergic modulator ketamine may be due to its ability to restore synaptic plasticity and related effects on sleep-wake and circadian systems. Preclinical studies indicate that ketamine alters expression of circadian clock-associated molecules, and clinical studies of ketamine on plasticity-related biomarkers further suggest an association...