Hallucinogenic agents as discriminative stimuli: a correlation with serotonin receptor affinities.
Psychopharmacology January 1, 1980 R A Glennon, R Young, J A Rosecrans et al. 46 citations
Rats can be trained to distinguish the hallucinogenic drug 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-OMe DMT) from a saline placebo using a lever-choice task. Once trained, the rats responded to 14 chemically similar tryptamine compounds as if they were 5-OMe DMT, with the strength of this response depending on the dose. For all but one compound, the dose needed to produce the drug-like response was strongly correlated (r = -0.86) with how tightly the compound binds to serotonin (5-HT) receptors, suggesting that these drugs' hallucinogenic effects are mediated through the serotonin system.