Ketamine administration in healthy volunteers reproduces aberrant agency experiences associated with schizophrenia.
James W. Moore, Danielle C. Turner, Philip R. Corlett, Fernando S. Arana, Hannah L. Morgan, Antony R. Absalom, Ram Adapa, Sanne De Wit, Jessica C. Everitt, Jenny M. Gardner, Jennifer S. Pigott, Patrick Haggard, Paul C. Fletcher
Cogn Neuropsychiatry February 6, 2011 DOI: 10.1080/13546805.2010.546074 via PubMed Central
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractKetamine, a drug that induces temporary psychosis-like symptoms, increased the sense of agency in healthy adults, mimicking the exaggerated action-effect binding seen in schizophrenia. In a small experiment, 14 participants given low-dose ketamine showed greater compression of time between their actions and outcomes compared to placebo. The size of this effect correlated with unusual bodily experiences caused by the drug. The findings suggest ketamine can reproduce certain agency disturbances characteristic of schizophrenia, and that these changes are linked to broader alterations in body awareness.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Experimental crossover study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 14 |
| Population | Right-handed healthy adults |
| Citations | 64 |
| Key finding | Ketamine significantly increased intentional binding, mimicking the exaggerated sense of agency seen in schizophrenia, and this effect correlated with aberrant bodily experiences. |
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Aberrant experience of agency is characteristic of schizophrenia. An understanding of the neurobiological basis of such experience is therefore of considerable importance for developing successful models of the disease. We aimed to characterise the effects of ketamine, a drug model for psychosis, on sense of agency (SoA). SoA is associated with a subjective compression of the temporal interval between an action and its effects: This is known as "intentional binding". This action-effect binding provides an indirect measure of SoA. Previous research has found that the magnitude of binding is exaggerated in patients with schizophrenia. We therefore investigated whether ketamine administration to otherwise healthy adults induced a similar pattern of binding. METHODS: 14 right-handed healthy participants (8 female; mean age 22.4 years) were given low-dose ketamine (100 ng/mL plasma) and completed the binding task. They also underwent structured clinical interviews. RESULTS: Ketamine mimicked the performance of schizophrenia patients on the intentional binding task, significantly increasing binding relative to placebo. The size of this effect also correlated with aberrant bodily experiences engendered by the drug. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that ketamine may be able to mimic certain aberrant agency experiences that characterise schizophrenia. The link to individual changes in bodily experience suggests that the fundamental change produced by the drug has wider consequences in terms of individuals' experiences of their bodies and movements.