ACS Chemical Neuroscience
May 11, 2018
Steven J Simmons, Jonna M Leyrer-Jackson, Chicora F Oliver et al.
Cathinone is a plant alkaloid found in khat leaves of perennial shrubs grown in East Africa. Similar to cocaine, cathinone elicits psychostimulant effects which are in part attributed to its amphetamine-like structure. Around 2010, home laboratories began altering the parent structure of cathinone to synthesize derivatives with mechanisms of action, potencies, and pharmacokinetics permitting...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
May 7, 2018
Balázs Szigeti, Adam Winstock, David Erritzøe et al.
17 citations
BACKGROUND: Neuroimaging studies imply that the regular use of ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), the major constituent of ecstasy pills, alters the brain's serotonergic system in a dose-dependent manner. However, the relevance of these findings remains unclear due to limited knowledge about the ecstasy/MDMA use pattern of real-life users. AIMS: We examined the representativeness of...
Neuropsychopharmacology
April 27, 2018
Inés Ibarra‐Lecue, Irene Mollinedo-Gajate, J. Javier Meana et al.
78 citations
Long-term use of potent cannabis during adolescence increases the risk of developing schizophrenia later in life, but to date, the mechanisms involved remain unknown. Several findings suggest that the functional selectivity of serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2AR) through inhibitory G-proteins is involved in the molecular mechanisms responsible for psychotic symptoms. Moreover, this receptor is...
Drug Testing and Analysis
April 19, 2018
Gavin McLaughlin, Michael H. Baumann, Pierce V. Kavanagh et al.
8 citations
The availability of new psychoactive substances (NPS) on the recreational drug market continues to create challenges for scientists in the forensic, clinical and toxicology fields. Phenmetrazine (3-methyl-2-phenylmorpholine) and an array of its analogs form a class of psychostimulants that are well documented in the patent and scientific literature. The present study reports on two...
Adaptive Behavior
April 4, 2018
Tom Froese, Iwin Leenen, Tomáš Páleníček
8 citations
After a hiatus of several decades, there has been a resurgence of studies into the therapeutic potential of serotonergic psychedelics. When administered in controlled settings, they have been reported to induce a wide variety of long-lasting positive psychological changes. However, the mechanisms by which psychedelics impart these long-lasting benefits remain poorly understood. Here, we...
Neurotoxicity Research
April 2018
Anna Maria Górska, Katarzyna Kamińska, Agnieszka Wawrzczak-Bargieła et al.
MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is a psychostimulant popular as a recreational drug because of its effect on mood and social interactions. MDMA acts at dopamine (DA) transporter (DAT) and serotonin (5-HT) transporter (SERT) and is known to induce damage of dopamine and serotonin neurons. MDMA is often ingested with caffeine. Caffeine as a non-selective adenosine A1/A2A receptor...
International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience
April 2018
Ankit Sood, Sthitapranjya Pati, Amrita Bhattacharya et al.
The early stress of Maternal Separation (MS) contributes to the establishment of adult psychopathology. The serotonergic (5-HT) system is implicated during this temporal window in mediating the development of mood-related behaviors. MS is reported to evoke altered 5-HT2A receptor function in adulthood. However, the ontogeny of altered 5-HT2A receptor responsivity following MS remains unknown....
The FASEB Journal
April 1, 2018
Matthias E. Liechti, Dino Luethi
Objective Novel psychoactive substances (NPS) or “bath salts” are increasingly sold over the Internet and used as substitutes for classic recreational substances. Previous studies showed that classic amphetamine‐type stimulants most potently act on the norepinephrine (NE) compared to the dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5‐HT) system and NE activation correlated with the subjective effects across...
Magnesium Research
April 1, 2018
Natalia Górska, Wiesław Jerzy Cubała, Jakub Słupski et al.
8 citations
Depression is one of the major causes of disability worldwide. A proportion of adults with major depression fail to achieve remission with first-line treatment. Magnesium influences the neurotransmission involved in emotional processes, such as the serotonergic, noradrenergic, dopaminergic, GABAergic and glutamatergic systems. It has been reported that the mechanism of antidepressants' action...
March 20, 2018
Samy Murat
Les récepteurs 5-HT2A de la sérotonine et mGlu2 du glutamate suscitent un grand intérêt vu la dérégulation des deux récepteurs observée dans la schizophrénie et leur statut de cibles des antipsychotiques dits atypiques et de nouvelle génération, respectivement. Même si les antipsychotiques atypiques ciblant le récepteur 5-HT2A ont montré une efficacité contre les symptômes positifs, leur effet...
Journal of Neuroscience
March 19, 2018
Katrin H. Preller, Leonhard Schilbach, Thomas Pokorny et al.
75 citations
Distortions of self-experience are critical symptoms of psychiatric disorders and have detrimental effects on social interactions. In light of the immense need for improved and targeted interventions for social impairments, it is important to better understand the neurochemical substrates of social interaction abilities. We therefore investigated the pharmacological and neural correlates of...
Frontiers in Pharmacology
March 15, 2018
Mark J. Benvenga, Stephen F. Chaney, Melvyn Baez et al.
26 citations
There is substantial evidence that glutamate can modulate the effects of 5-hydroxytryptamine2A (5-HT2A) receptor activation through stimulation of metabotropic glutamate 2/3 (mGlu2/3) receptors in the prefrontal cortex. Here we show that constitutive deletion of the mGlu2 gene profoundly attenuates an effect of 5-HT2A receptor activation using the mouse head twitch response (HTR). MGlu2 and...
Behavioural Pharmacology
March 13, 2018
Rachel R. Horsley, Tomáš Páleníček, Jan Kolin et al.
52 citations
Short-term moderate doses of serotonergic and dissociative hallucinogens can be useful in the treatment of anxiety. Recently, a trend has developed for long-term intermittent 'microdosing' (usually one-tenth of a 'full' active dose), with reports of long-lasting relief from anxiety and related disorders; however, there is no scientific evidence for the efficacy of therapeutic microdosing nor to...
Hippocampus
March 2018
Boris Mlinar, Renato Corradetti
The hippocampus is functionally differentiated along its longitudinal axis, with the dorsal and ventral segments preferentially involved in cognitive and emotional processing, respectively. Serotonergic modulation of hippocampal function has been extensively studied, but its relation to the dorsoventral axis has remained largely unknown. To examine the modulation of hippocampal output along the...
Frontiers in Pharmacology
March 1, 2018
Emmanuelle A. D. Schindler, Ryan M Wallace, Jordan Sloshower et al.
Recent reports on the effects of psychedelic-assisted therapies for mood disorders and addiction, as well as the effects of psychedelics in the treatment of cluster headache, have demonstrated promising therapeutic results. In addition, the beneficial effects appear to persist well after limited exposure to the drugs, making them particularly appealing as treatments for chronic neuropsychiatric...
SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología
March 1, 2018
Elaheh Mahmoudi, Mehrdad Faizi, Reza Hajiaghaee et al.
14 citations
Background and objectives: Considering the increasing prevalence of depression, many studies are launched to investigate new antidepressant treatments. The present research has shown how psilocybin as an active compound of Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Singer extract (PCE) can change the parameters related to depression and anxiety in animal models. Both serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine: 5-HT) and...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
February 27, 2018
Joshua S. Elmore, Michael H. Baumann
26 citations
Naphthalen-1-yl-(1-pentylindol-3-yl)methanone (JWH-018) is a synthetic compound found in psychoactive “spice” products that activates cannabinoid receptors. Preclinical evidence suggests that exposure to synthetic cannabinoids increases 5-HT2A/2C receptor function in the brain, an effect which might contribute to psychotic symptoms. Here, we hypothesized that repeated exposures to JWH-018 would...
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
February 13, 2018
José Carlos Bouso, Rafael G. Dos Santos, Miguel Ángel Alcázar‐córcoles et al.
135 citations
Serotonergic psychedelics act as agonists at cortical 5-HT2A receptors and seem to induce personality changes. We conducted a systematic review of studies assessing the effects of these drugs on personality. Papers published from 1985-2016 were included from PubMed, LILACS, and SciELO databases. Three hundred and sixty-nine studies were identified, and 18 were included. Specific personality...
Frontiers in Pharmacology
February 6, 2018
Tobias Buchborn, Taylor Lyons, Thomas Knöpfel
48 citations
The serotonin (5-HT) 2A receptor is the primary molecular target of serotonergic hallucinogens, which trigger large-scale perturbations of the cortex. Our understanding of how 5-HT2A activation may cause the effects of hallucinogens has been hampered by the receptor unselectivity of most of the drugs of this class. Here we used 25CN-NBOH...
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
February 2, 2018
Simon Reiche, Leo Hermle, Stefan Gutwinski et al.
125 citations
Anxiety and depression are some of the most common psychiatric symptoms of patients suffering with life-threatening diseases, often associated with a low quality of life and a poor overall prognosis. 5-HT2A-receptor agonists (serotonergic hallucinogens, 'psychedelics') like lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin were first investigated as therapeutic agents in the 1960s. Recently,...