The psychotomimetic ketamine disrupts the transfer of late sensory information in the corticothalamic network
bioRxiv Preprint Server February 21, 2022 Yi Qin, Ali Mahdavi, Marine Bertschy et al. preprint
In early schizophrenia, attention and perception problems are linked to brain structure and chemistry abnormalities, as well as disrupted brain rhythms in corticothalamic networks. The drug ketamine, which blocks NMDA receptors, mimics these symptoms. In lightly anesthetized rats, a single psychotomimetic dose of ketamine (2.5 mg/kg, subcutaneous) transiently increased baseline beta/gamma oscillations but decreased sensory-induced beta/gamma oscillations. It also disrupted information transfer in the somatosensory thalamus and cortex and reduced sensory-induced thalamocortical connectivity in the broadband gamma range. These findings support the hypothesis that NMDA receptor antagonism disrupts the transfer of perceptual information in the somatosensory cortico-thalamo-cortical system.