Artin H, Zisook S, Ramanathan D. How do serotonergic psychedelics treat depression: The potential role of neuroplasticity. World J Psychiatr 2021; 11(6): 201-214 [PMID: 34168967 DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v11.i6.201]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Hewa Artin, MD, Doctor, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States. hartin@health.ucsd.edu
Research Domain of This Article
Behavioral Sciences
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Psychiatr. Jun 19, 2021; 11(6): 201-214 Published online Jun 19, 2021. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v11.i6.201
How do serotonergic psychedelics treat depression: The potential role of neuroplasticity
Hewa Artin, Sidney Zisook, Dhakshin Ramanathan
Hewa Artin, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States
Sidney Zisook, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Diego, San Diego, CA 92093, United States
Dhakshin Ramanathan, Department of Psychiatry, VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA 92161, United States
Author contributions: All authors participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for its content; all authors provided substantial contributions to conception and design of the manuscript, contributed to drafting the article and revising it critically for important intellectual content and provided final approval of the version that was submitted.
Supported byDepartment of Veteran’s Affairs, Veteran’s Health Administration (Career Development Award), No. 7IK2BX003308 (to Ramanathan D); Start-up Funds from the UCSD Department of Psychiatry (to Ramanathan D); and The Burroughs Welcome Fund (Career Award for Medical Scientists), No. 1015644 (to Ramanathan D).
Conflict-of-interest statement: Dr. Zisook S receives grant support from COMPASS Pathways.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hewa Artin, MD, Doctor, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States. hartin@health.ucsd.edu
Received: February 15, 2021 Peer-review started: February 15, 2021 First decision: March 30, 2021 Revised: April 7, 2021 Accepted: May 20, 2021 Article in press: May 20, 2021 Published online: June 19, 2021 Processing time: 116 Days and 1.2 Hours
Abstract
Depression is a common mental disorder and one of the leading causes of disability around the world. Monoaminergic antidepressants often take weeks to months to work and are not effective for all patients. This has led to a search for a better understanding of the pathogenesis of depression as well as to the development of novel antidepressants. One such novel antidepressant is ketamine, which has demonstrated both clinically promising results and contributed to new explanatory models of depression, including the potential role of neuroplasticity in depression. Early clinical trials are now showing promising results of serotonergic psychedelics for depression; however, their mechanism of action remains poorly understood. This paper seeks to review the effect of depression, classic antidepressants, ketamine, and serotonergic psychedelics on markers of neuroplasticity at a cellular, molecular, electrophysiological, functional, structural, and psychological level to explore the potential role that neuroplasticity plays in the treatment response of serotonergic psychedelics.
Core Tip: Depression is a common mental disorder and one of the leading causes of disability around the world. Monoaminergic antidepressants often take weeks to months to work and are not effective for all patients. This review specifically compares the effects of serotonergic psychedelics with other antidepressants on plasticity at multiple levels of nervous system functioning.
