Disruption of Prefrontal Cortex Large Scale Neuronal Activity by Different Classes of Psychotomimetic Drugs
Journal of Neuroscience February 29, 2012 Jesse Wood, Yunbok Kim, Bita Moghaddam 164 citations
Schizophrenia is thought to be a disorder of neural coordination, not cellular pathology. In rats, three different psychotomimetic drugs—MK801 (an NMDA receptor antagonist), DOI (a serotonergic hallucinogen), and amphetamine—all disrupted population activity and modulated gamma oscillations in the prefrontal cortex, but through different mechanisms. MK801 increased population activity, DOI decreased it, and amphetamine had little effect. All three drugs reduced correlations between spike-rate and local field potential power specifically in the gamma band, suggesting they disconnect spike-discharge from gamma oscillators. Gamma oscillations support cognitive functions affected in schizophrenia, offering insight into cortical processing deficits.