ReviewBehavioural brain research2019
Rodent ketamine depression-related research: Finding patterns in a literature of variability.
Review in Behavioural brain research, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 58 citations in OpenAlex.
- Distinct Molecular Responses to Ketamine and Imipramine in Cortical and Striatal Regions Following Acute Swim Stress.Biomolecules · 2026Article
- A human-derived Bacteroides strain attenuates depressive-like behavior in a rat model of social defeat-induced stress.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Acoustically activatable liposomes as a translational nanotechnology for site-targeted drug delivery and noninvasive neuromodulation.Nature nanotechnology · 2025Article
- Cognitive flexibility of male rats is increased by augmented punishment in a reversal learning task but ketamine has no detectable long-term effects.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Sex-Specific Neuropsychiatric Effects of Subanesthetic Ketamine Exposure in Pregnant Mice and Their Offspring.Cellular and molecular neurobiology · 2025Article
- Monoclonal humanized monovalent antibody blocking therapy for anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Ketamine differentially affects implicit and explicit memory processes in rats.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Ketamine rescues anhedonia by cell-type- and input-specific adaptations in the nucleus accumbens.Neuron · 2025Article
- Rapid hippocampal synaptic potentiation induced by ketamine metabolite (2R,6R)-hydroxynorketamine persistently primes synaptic plasticity.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Comparison of actions of ketamine and telazol on cochlear function in a rodent model of noise-induced hearing loss.Brain research · 2025Article
- Frontal Alpha Asymmetry and Its Modulation by Monoaminergic Neurotransmitters in Depression.Clinical psychopharmacology and neuroscience : the official scientific journal of the Korean College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Review
- Article
- Ketamine produces no detectable long-term positive or negative effects on cognitive flexibility or reinforcement learning of male rats.Psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Ketamine's rapid and sustained antidepressant effects are driven by distinct mechanisms.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2024Article
- Therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics and entactogens.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Review
- 4-F-PCP, a Novel PCP Analog Ameliorates the Depressive-Like Behavior of Chronic Social Defeat Stress Mice via NMDA Receptor Antagonism.Biomolecules & therapeutics · 2023Article
- Increased intrinsic and synaptic excitability of hypothalamic POMC neurons underlies chronic stress-induced behavioral deficits.Molecular psychiatry · 2023Article
- Role of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway in the antidepressant effects of ketamine.Neuropharmacology · 2023Review
- Astrocytic lactate dehydrogenase A regulates neuronal excitability and depressive-like behaviors through lactate homeostasis in mice.Nature communications · 2023Article
- GALR2 and Y1R agonists intranasal infusion enhanced adult ventral hippocampal neurogenesis and antidepressant-like effects involving BDNF actions.Journal of cellular physiology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Discovering that the anesthetic drug ketamine has rapidly acting antidepressant effects in many individuals with major depression is one of the most important findings in clinical psychopharmacology in recent decades. The initial report of these effects in human subjects was based on a foundation of rodent preclinical studies carried out in the 1990s, and subsequent investigation has included both further studies in individuals with depression, as well as reverse translational experiments in animal models, especially rodents. While there is general agreement in the rodent literature that ketamine has rapidly-acting, and generally sustained, antidepressant-like properties, there are also points of contention across studies, including the precise mechanism of action of this drug. In this review, we briefly summarize prominent yet variable findings regarding the mechanism of action. We also discuss a combination of similarities and variances in the rodent literature in the antidepressant-like effects of ketamine as a function of dose, species and strain, test, stressor, and presumably sex of the experimenter. We then present previously unpublished mouse strain comparison data suggesting that subanesthetic ketamine does not have robust antidepressant-like properties in unstressed animals, and may actually promote depression-like behavior, in contrast to widely reported findings. We conclude that the data best support the notion of ketamine action principally via NMDA receptor antagonism, transiently boosting glutamatergic (and possibly other) signaling in diverse brain circuits. We also suggest that future studies should address in greater detail the extent to which antidepressant-like properties of this drug are stress-sensitive, in an effort to better model major depression present in humans.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.