Ketamine, an NMDAR antagonist, and rapastinel, an NMDAR positive allosteric modulator, both produce rapid and sustained antidepressant effects, but rapastinel lacks ketamine's severe side effects. Their shared antidepressant action converges on the BDNF and mTORC1 signaling pathways, which promote synaptic plasticity. This suggests that targeting downstream synaptic processes could guide the development of next-generation rapid-acting antidepressants.
When researchers are overly cautious in how they report their analyses of brain activity, it can artificially inflate the apparent relationship between neural measures and conscious or unconscious experiences. This makes it harder to tell the difference between conscious and unconscious processing. The finding suggests that reporting practices can introduce bias that obscures the true distinctions between these two types of experiences.
An open science adversarial collaboration directly juxtaposed Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) by investigating neural correlates of visual experience. 256 human subjects viewed suprathreshold stimuli for variable durations while neural activity was measured with fMRI, MEG, and ECoG. Information about conscious content was found in visual, ventro-temporal, and inferior frontal cortex, with sustained responses in occipital and lateral temporal cortex reflecting stimulus duration, and content-specific synchronization between frontal and early visual areas.