Lithium Extends Anti-Depressant Effects of Ketamine in Mice

January 26, 2015 · Posted in Potential Treatments · Comment 

mice getting an injection

While it can sometimes take weeks for the effects of antidepressant treatments to appear, intravenous ketamine can produce antidepressant effects in as little as two hours. However, ketamine’s effects fade after three to five days. New animal research by Chi-Tso Chiu et al. explores whether adding lithium to ketamine treatment can produce more sustained antidepressant effects.

Mice who are restrained by being placed in a tube for several hours (chronic restraint stress) exhibit a behavioral and neurochemical profile that resembles human depression. When Chiu and colleagues pretreated these stressed mice with sub-therapeutic doses of lithium (600 mg/L) in their drinking water for several weeks, a sub-therapeutic dose of ketamine (2.5 mg/kg of body weight) was enough to produce robust antidepressant effects in the mice, while neither drug alone was effective at these doses.

The combination of ketamine and lithium also restored the density of spines on the dendrites of neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex. Post-treatment with lithium (1200 mg/L) for several weeks was also successful in extending the effects of a single (50 mg/kg) ketamine injection.

Both lithium and ketamine affect the intracellular signaling pathway mTOR. Ketamine activates the pathway, increasing levels of synaptic proteins and dendritic spine density. It also increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and the BDNF receptor TrkB. BDNF is important for learning and memory.

When lithium was added to the treatment of the mice with ketamine, the mTOR and BNDF pathways were further activated. Lithium also inhibits the receptor GSK-3, supporting ketamine’s rapid-acting antidepressant effects.

Ketamine treatment can produce oxidative stress, in which toxic free radicals can endanger cells, and the addition of low doses of lithium also completely prevented this neurochemical side effect.

Chiu and colleagues hope that the findings of this study in mice can eventually be applied to research in humans in the hopes of finding a clinical option that would sustain the rapid-onset antidepressant effects of ketamine for the long term.

Methamphetamine Kills Dopamine Neurons in the Midbrain of Mice

December 29, 2014 · Posted in Risk Factors · Comment 

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Epidemiological studies have linked methamphetamine use to risk of Parkinson’s disease, and animal studies of the illicit drug have shown that it harms dopamine neurons. A 2014 study by Sara Ares-Santos et al. in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology compared the effects of repeated low or medium doses to those of a single high dose on mice. Loss of dopaminergic terminals, where dopamine is released, was greatest after three injections of 10mg/kg given at three-hour intervals, followed by three injections of 5 mg/kg at three-hour intervals, and a one-time dose of 30mg/kg. All of the dosages produced similar rates of degeneration of dopamine neurons via necrosis (cell destruction) and apoptosis (cell suicide) in the substantia nigra pars compacta (the part of the brain that degenerates in Parkinson’s disease) and the striatum.

Antidepressants and Ketamine Reverse Animal Models of Anhedonia and Learned Helplessness

October 20, 2014 · Posted in Neurobiology · Comment 

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Researcher Tony Pitts presented a study at the 2014 meeting of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP) that described the neurobiology of an animal model of depression in rodents. In animal models, researchers provoke depression-like symptoms in animals with the hopes of finding neurobiological clues to human depression. Pitts’ studies explored the effects of acute stressors as well as more chronic long-term stressors such as learned helplessness.

In the rodents, acute stressors caused increased cell firing in the hippocampus, which caused increases in burst firing and an increase in the number of cells firing in the ventral tegmental area, which then led to increased activity in the nucleus accumbens (the brain’s reward center). However, after the stressor was over, there was an opponent process that resulted in a much more prolonged period of inhibition in the nucleus accumbens, with associated decreases in psychomotor activity and reward seeking. The rodents lost their preference for sucrose and engaged in less intracranial self-stimulation, pressing a bar to stimulate the brain pleasurably. These and other effects suggest an analogy to anhedonia (loss of pleasure in activities that were previously enjoyed), which is a key component of human depression.

In related studies, after experiencing periods of inescapable shocks, rodents developed learned helplessness, failing to avoid the area where shocks were delivered even when an exit was readily available. Rodents who had learned helplessness showed inhibited firing of cells in the ventral tegmental area, less activity in the nucleus accumbens, and apparent anhedonia. This inhibition was mediated via messages from the infralimbic prefrontal cortex (the equivalent to the subgenual cingulate cortex in humans, important for motivation) to the amygdala and then the GABAergic ventral pallidum, which decreased the number of dopaminergic cells firing in the ventral tegmental area. Blocking the amygdala input to this inhibitory pathway reversed the low dopamine firing and the anhedonia-like behaviors.

The anesthetic ketamine (which has rapid-acting antidepressant effects in humans) produces an immediate reversal of the learned helpless behavior in the rodents and increases the number of dopamine cells firing in the ventral tegmental area. Ketamine administered directly into the nucleus accumbens induces long-term potentiation (enhanced synaptic responsivity) and reverses helpless behavior and the long-term depression of neural firing that is associated with it.

Thus, when an acute stressor is over and the opponent process emerges, or following long-term chronic stressors such as learned helplessness, the excitatory path to the ventral tegmental area is absent, while the inhibitory path to the ventral tegmental area (via the infralimbic prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and ventral pallidum) predominates. Ketamine is able to re-activate the activating pathway and increase activity in the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens, changes that are associated with the reversal of learned helplessness and anhedonia.

Editor’s Note: In the previous BNN, we reported researcher Scott Russo’s findings that input from the intralaminar nucleus of the thalamus was critical to the depression-like behaviors seen in a different animal model of depression, social defeat stress, where repeated exposure to defeat by a larger, more aggressive animal produces behaviors that resemble human depression. Here in Pitts’ research, learned helplessness is induced by inescapable shocks. Both models share the finding that firing decreases in the reward area of the brain (the nucleus accumbens). However, the key part of the brain driving the low levels of activity in the nucleus accumbens and the associated depression-like behavior appear to be different in these two different models. The intralaminar nucleus of the thalamus plays a key role in the social defeat stress model, while the infralimbic cortex and the amygdala play key roles in the learned helplessness model. These data together suggest that part of the reason depression differs from person to person may be because the illness can be driven by different brain areas as a result of different kinds of stressors.

Antidepressants and Ketamine Induce Resilience in Animals Susceptible to Depression-Like Behavior

October 14, 2014 · Posted in Neurobiology · Comment 

ratTo study depression in humans, researchers look to rodents to learn more about behavior. Rodents who are repeatedly defeated by more aggressive animals often begin to exhibit behavior that resembles depression. At the 2014 meeting of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP), researcher Andre Der-Avakian reported that in a recent study, repeated experiences of social defeat led to depressive behavior in a subgroup of animals (which he calls susceptible), but not in others (which he calls resilient). Among many biological differences, the resilient animals showed increases in neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus.

Chronic treatment of the susceptible animals with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant fluoxetine or the tricyclic antidepressant desipramine, which both increase neurogenesis, also reversed the depressive behavior in about half of the animals. A single injection of the anesthetic ketamine (which has rapid-acting antidepressant effects in humans) reversed social avoidance behavior in about 25% of the animals. One depression-like symptom was anhedonia (loss of pleasure from previously enjoyed activities), which researchers measured by observing to what extent the animals engaged in intracranial self-stimulation, pressing a bar to stimulate the brain pleasurably. The effectiveness of the drugs in inducing resilient behavior was related to the degree of anhedonia seen in the animals. The drugs worked less well in the more anhedonic animals (those who gave up the intracranial stimulation more easily, indicating that they experienced less reward from it.)

Psychiatric Revolution: Changes in Behavior Are Associated with Dendritic Spine Shape and Number

May 10, 2013 · Posted in Neurobiology, Potential Treatments · Comment 
Neuron cell

Neuron cell

New research shows that cocaine, defeat stress, the rapid-acting antidepressant ketamine, and learning and memory can change the size, shape, or number of spines on the dendrites of neurons. Dendrites conduct electrical impulses into the cell body from neighboring neurons.

Cocaine

Several researchers, including Peter Kalivas at the Medical University of South Carolina, have reported that cocaine increases the size of the spines on the dendrites of a certain kind of neurons (GABAergic medium spiny neurons) in the nucleus accumbens (the reward center in the brain). This occurs through a dopamine D1 selective mechanism. N-acetylcysteine, a drug that can be found in health food stores, decreases cocaine intake in animals and humans, and also normalizes the size of dendritic spines.

Depression

Depression in animals and humans is associated with decreases in Rac1, a protein in the dendritic spines on GABA neurons in the nucleus accumbens. Rac1 regulates actin and other molecules that alter the shape of the spines.

In an animal model of depression called defeat stress, rodents are stressed by repeatedly being placed in a larger animal’s territory. Their subsequent behavior mimics clinical depression. This kind of social defeat stress decreases Rac1 and causes spines to become thin and lose some function. Replacing Rac1 returns the spines to a more mature mushroom shape and reverses the depressive behavior of these socially defeated animals. Researcher Scott Russo has also found Rac1 deficits in the nucleus accumbens of depressed patients who committed suicide. Russo suggests that decreases in Rac1 are responsible for the manifestation of social avoidance and other depressive behaviors in the defeat stress animal model, and that finding ways to increase Rac1 in humans would be an important new target for antidepressant drug development.

Another animal model of depression called chronic intermittent stress (in which the animals are exposed to a series of unexpected stressors like sounds or mild shocks) also induces depression-like behavior and makes the dendritic spines thin and stubby. The drug ketamine, which can bring about antidepressant effects in humans in as short a time as 2 hours, rapidly reverses the depressive behavior in animals and converts the spines back to the larger, more mature mushroom-shape they typically have.

Learning and Extinction of Fear

Researcher Wenbiao Gan has reported that fear conditioning can change the number of dendritic spines. When animals hear a tone paired with an electrical shock, they begin to exhibit a fear response to the tone. In layer 5 of the prefrontal cortex, spines are eliminated when conditioned fear develops, and are reformed (near where the eliminated spines were) during extinction training, when animals hear the tones without receiving the shock and learn not to fear the tone. However, in the primary auditory cortex the changes are opposite: new spines are formed with learning, and spines are eliminated with extinction.

Editor’s Note: It appears that we have arrived at a new milestone in psychiatry. In the field of neurology, changes seen in the brains of patients with strokes or Alzheimer’s dementia have been considered “real” because cells were obviously lost or dead. Psychiatry, in comparison, has been considered a soft science because neuronal changes have been more difficult to see and illnesses were and still are called “mental.” Now that new technologies have made a deeper level of precision, observation, and analysis possible, we know that the brain’s 12 billion neurons and 4 times as many glial cells are exquisitely plastic–capable of biochemical and structural changes that can be reversed using appropriate therapeutic maneuvers.

The changes associated with abnormal behaviors, addictions, and even normal processes of learning and memory now have clearly been shown to correspond with the size, shape, and biochemistry of dendritic spines. These subtle, reproducible changes in the brain and body are amenable to therapeutic intervention, and are now even more demanding of sophisticated medical attention.

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