Ketamine-induced analgesia and dissociation show distinct behavioral and neural correlates
Neuropsychopharmacology July 20, 2026 Noam Goldway, Itamar Jalon, Yara Agbaria et al.
Ketamine produces both pain relief and dissociation, but it remains unclear whether the two are linked. In a placebo-controlled fMRI study with 37 healthy volunteers, intravenous ketamine reduced pain and induced dissociation, yet the two effects showed distinct brain signatures. Pain was associated with activity in regions like the anterior insula and a pain-predictive brain pattern, while dissociation was linked to reduced connectivity in the default mode network. These neural markers did not correlate with each other, suggesting that ketamine's analgesic and dissociative effects arise through separate mechanisms.