A single intravenous dose of ketamine, an N-methyl-D-aspartate-receptor antagonist, produced rapid antidepressant effects in patients with treatment-resistant bipolar depression. Depressive symptoms improved within 40 minutes and remained significantly better than placebo through day 3. The largest drug effect occurred at day 2. Seventy-one percent of subjects responded to ketamine versus 6% to placebo. One subject in each group developed manic symptoms. Ketamine was generally well tolerated, with dissociative symptoms only at the 40-minute point.
Memories of near-death experiences (NDE) and spiritual contemplative experiences (SCE) show similar brain activation patterns in delta, alpha, and gamma bands, along with frontal lobe activation, as measured by quantitative electroencephalography tomography. The Greyson Scale evaluation indicates a correlation between the attributes of NDE and SCE, such as cognitive timelessness, affective peace, transcendent oneness, and out-of-body sensations. SCE subjects exhibited statistically greater brain activation than NDE subjects. The study used QEEGt methodology, which incorporates MRI anatomical information to improve the precision of EEG source localization.