Another study shows that ketamine — a disassociative anesthetic known on the street as “Special K” — could ease depression — in a jiffy:
Their study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found ketamine restores to normal the orbifrontal cortex, an area of the brain located above the eyes that is overactive in depressed people.The area is believed to be responsible for feelings of guilt, dread, apprehension and physical reactions such as a racing heart, said Bill Deakin, who led the study.
“The study results have given us a completely novel way of treating depression and a new avenue of understanding depression,” said Deakin, a neuroscientist at the University of Manchester.
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In their study, Deakin and his team gave intravenous ketamine to 33 healthy male volunteers and took minute-by-minute brain scans to see what was happening as the drug took effect.Images from the scans showed that the drug — also used as a battlefield anesthetic — worked quickly, Deakin said.
The results were surprising because the researchers had expected that the ketamine would instead affect the part of the brain that controls psychosis, he added.
“There was some activity there but more striking was the switching off of the depression centre,” Deakin said.
Previous research had shown that ketamine improved symptoms in depressed people after just 24 hours — far faster than the month it can take for Prozac to kick in — but until now they did not know exactly how.