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The anesthetic drug, ketamine, triggers a two-step process to repair the symptoms of depression. Scientists have discovered this breakthrough using mice in an experiment. ( Holger Langmaier | pixabay )
Ketamine is known to relieve depression from a few days to a week. Now scientists have discovered how the drug affects brain circuits.
Since being discovered as an effective antidepressant, anesthetic ketamine has already been used to treat thousands of people with depression. However, scientists still do not know how the drug actually works in the brain of a human being.
A substantial breakthrough
A study published on April 12 in the online scientific journal Science revealed how researchers were able to study closely how and when ketamine works in a functional brain. Dr. Conor Liston, neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and author of the study, used mice.
"There is probably no depressed mouse," said Liston.
To study the antidepressant effects of ketamine in mice, the animals were injected with a stress hormone which caused them to act depressed. The effects of depression in mice include the loss of interest in their usual activities such as labyrinth exploration and sugar consumption.
Then, the mice received doses of ketamine and using a special laser microscope, scientists were able to see the effects of ketamine on the brain of the mouse. According to Liston, it is at that time that they noticed something amazing.
"Ketamine is restoring many of the exact synapses in their identical configuration to the one that existed before the animal was exposed to chronic stress," he said.
Liston and a group of scientists from Japan and the United States contributed to the experiment.
A two-step process
Experience has shown that ketamine is really effective in treating depression, but scientists are still curious about how the drug works so quickly.
To find out, scientists have used a technology designed for living brain cells to glow and shine under a microscope to identify the groups of brain circuits that illuminate together.
It was then that they discovered that in less than six hours that the mice had received a dose of ketamine, the brain circuits affected by the stress hormone had started working together again. The mice also stopped showing symptoms of depression at the time.
Scientists have also discovered that these instantaneous effects occurred long before ketamine could restore all damaged brain synapses.
As a result, researchers were able to not only know how ketamine works, but also why its effects tend to fade after a few weeks.
According to this study, ketamine triggers a two-step process that reduces the symptoms of depression. First, the drug somehow persuades the stressed brain circuits to work together again. After that, it also produces a temporary fix that restores synaptic connections between cells in a circuit.
Because of the success of the experiment, researchers are now looking into how to maintain ketamine-fixed brain circuits in order to develop a permanent treatment for depression.
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