Interest in ketamine and psilocybin as potential therapies for mood disorders has surged since around 2010. A groundbreaking 2000 study at Yale revealed the powerful antidepressant effects of ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic. Unlike traditional antidepressants which can take weeks or months to have an impact, a single dose of ketamine led to significant improvements in depressive symptoms in as little as 72 hours.
Structural neuroplasticity and non-hallucinogenic psychoplastogensThis revelation, which Kurt Rasmussen, chief scientific officer of Delix, describes as a “watershed development” in neuropsychiatry, sparked a new understanding of the brain’s capacity for rapid structural neuroplasticity. Essentially, drugs like ketamine can prompt the brain to form new neural connections quickly, a process known as synaptogenesis. “Neuron damage is a component of many different disease states,” Rasmussen noted. “And the discovery of ketamine’…