Ketamine induces multiple individually distinct whole-brain functional connectivity signatures.
eLife April 17, 2024 Flora Moujaes, Jie Lisa Ji, Masih Rahmati et al. 23 citations
Ketamine is a promising treatment for treatment-resistant depression, but why people respond differently is poorly understood. In a single-blind placebo-controlled study, 40 healthy participants received acute ketamine. Using data-driven global brain connectivity, the neural and behavioral effects of ketamine were found to be multi-dimensional, reflecting robust inter-individual variability. Ketamine's principal neural gradient matched somatostatin and parvalbumin cortical gene expression patterns, while the mean effect did not. Behavioral symptom variation mapped onto distinct neural gradients resolvable at the single-subject level. These results highlight the importance of individual variation for developing precise pharmacological biomarkers in psychiatry.