Spotlight: A long, strange trip: Ketamine treatment in psychiatry (Nutt, et al, 2025)
"...mystical experiences were strongly related to immediate and sustained psychiatric benefits at the group level and on an individual, session-by-session basis across the six doses, providing mechanistic support for ketamine-psychotherapy pairings."
Spotlight: Changing your mind: neuroplastic mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effect of psychedelics in depression, PTSD, and addiction (Palhas, et al, 2025)
"Serotonergic psychedelics & ketamine appear to share common cellular mechanisms. They both recruit glutamatergic neurons to stimulate BDNF-trKB signaling, promoting synaptogenesis via the mTOR pathway. These changes may explain their efficacy in depression, anxiety, PTSD, & addiction."
How does ketamine affect psychotherapy?
Studies suggest that human support is a factor in ketamine psychedelic therapy
Spotlight: Antidepressants and the endogenous opioid system (Fricker, et al, 2025)
"A growing body of evidence links the opioid system w/ major depressive disorder... two different widely used antidepressants, tianeptine & ketamine, both interact with MOR; tianeptine as a full agonist, ketamine as a positive allosteric modulator. Both produce antidepressant effects within days."
Spotlight: Ketamine Harm Reduction
Prevention & Treatment in Ketamine Use Disorder - When a medicine becomes a poison
Spotlight: The transformational power of psychedelics: catalysts for creativity, consciousness, and mental health (Du, et al, 2025)
"Psychedelics, such as psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ketamine, and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), have captured the attention of scientists, artists, and seekers alike for their profound ability to alter consciousness and inspire creativity."
