European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience
September 28, 2024
Yue Wang, Qiongyao Yang, Chuanchuan Chen et al.
10 citations
After six low-dose esketamine infusions, patients with treatment-resistant depression showed improvement in anhedonia and depressive symptoms. Plasma levels of cortisol, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha decreased, while the anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-4 increased. Baseline cortisol levels correlated with anhedonia, but inflammatory factors showed no significant correlation. Elevated plasma cortisol may serve as a potential biomarker for anhedonia in treatment-resistant depression.
Neuron
October 9, 2024
Luyu Fan, Youwen Zhuang, Hongyu Wu et al.
6 citations
LSD dissociates extremely rapidly from the dopamine D1 receptor, driven by the flexibility of extracellular loop 2. Cryo-electron microscopy structures reveal a distinctive binding mode with the ergoline moiety oriented toward transmembrane helix 4. G protein binding stabilizes the extracellular loop 2 conformation, which markedly slows LSD's dissociation rate. These kinetic and structural insights clarify how LSD engages dopamine receptors and how G protein coupling versus β-arrestin coupling is determined, advancing understanding of GPCR dynamics and signal transduction.
Journal of affective disorders
January 15, 2025
Qiongyao Yang, Yitan Yao, Xiaoping Yuan et al.
3 citations
In patients with depression, six intravenous infusions of esketamine (0.4 mg/kg) over 11 days significantly reduced depressive symptoms, with mean Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale scores dropping from 32.11 to 15.10. Memory function—including immediate memory, language, attention, and delayed memory—improved, and plasma nerve growth factor (NGF) levels rose from 226.13 to 384.37 pg/mL. A positive correlation existed between baseline memory function and NGF levels, while higher baseline memory was linked to smaller NGF increases. These findings suggest NGF may contribute to esketamine's memory-enhancing effects, though the open-label design limits certainty.
Religions
June 12, 2026
Yue Wang
Lotus and dharma wheel motifs in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves are not merely decorative but function as active visual apparatuses that generate embodied religious experience through a mechanism called totemic mediation. Drawing on structuralist and phenomenological theories, the analysis of motifs in Caves 285, 329, and 361 shows that the lotus mediates ontologically along a spatial axis, building a vertical channel between the worldly and the divine, while the dharma wheel mediates teleologically across the temporal axis, neutralizing linear temporality through rotational dynamics. Together, these motifs constitute visual prajñā—a nonconceptual, embodied cognitive effect that enables direct apprehension of emptiness.