A researcher at Cornell University is using optical microscopy and other tools to map the brain’s neural response to psychedelics.
Alex Kwan, associate professor of biomedical engineering is hoping the approach could lead to the development of fast-acting antidepressants and treatments for substance-use disorders and cluster headaches.
Kwan highlights that there is currently a lack of understanding around how psychedelics impact the brain at the neural circuit level.
“We know more about the pharmacology, how psychedelics work at the structural level, interacting with the brain receptors. But there has been a big void in terms of understanding what they do to the brain itself, at the neural circuit level,” said Kwan.
“There’s a chain of events that happen that ultimately lead to acute and longer-lasting behavioural changes that might be useful for treatment. But in between a lot of that is a black box.”
To bring the current scientific information up to date, Kwan and a team of collaborators have authored a review paper that explains the basic neurobiology of how psychedelic drugs work at the chemical, molecular, neuronal and network levels, and raises topics for future exploration, such as the impact of compound psychedelics on different types of brain cells.
The authors state: “By synthesizing knowledge across the chemical, molecular, neuronal, and network levels, we hope to provide an integrative perspective on the neural mechanisms responsible for the acute and enduring effects of psychedelics on behaviour.”
Kwan’s research primarily focuses on psilocybin, which is currently being tested in Phase II clinical trials for a range of different conditions such as depression and anxiety.
Kwan’s lab is also looking at other compounds, such as 5-MeO-DMT, which is exuded by the glands of the Sonoran Desert Toad as a defense mechanism.
“Scientists used to put electrodes in a rat’s brain, and they would record one neuron at a time. But since then, the field of neuroscience has progressed tremendously,” Kwan said.
“Now we have ways to record not one neuron, but tens of thousands. We have ways of controlling neural activity.
“We have much more rigorous methods to measure animal behaviour.”
