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The Medial Prefrontal Cortex To Dorsal Raphe Circuit In The Antidepressant Action Of Ketamine, Alexandra Thomas

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Major depressive disorder is a common and debilitating illness for which there is a notable lack of efficient, effective treatment. While currently available pharmacotherapies typically take eight weeks to take effect and fail to do so at all for about a third of patients, the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist ketamine has shown a much more favorable effectiveness profile, including improvements in symptoms within hours of administration, even for many patients who do not respond to typical antidepressants. Ketamine, as a modulator of glutamate signaling in the brain, has a distinct mechanism of action from the serotonin and norepinephrine modulators that …