Naomi Driesen
Yale University, CT·Medicine & Clinical Research
Ketamine, an anesthetic drug, can quickly ease depression in people who have not been helped by standard antidepressants. This condition is called treatment-resistant depression (TRD), and it causes great distress and disability.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
- Topics
treatment-resistant depression
major depression
ketamine
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Test whether pretreatment with perampanel, an approved drug that blocks AMPA glutamate receptors, prevents ketamine from reducing depression symptoms in patients with treatment-resistant depression.
- Determine whether perampanel pretreatment changes ketamine-related increases in resting-state functional connectivity of the subcallosal cortex, a mood-related brain region, measured with brain imaging in TRD patients.
- Assess whether perampanel blocks ketamine's increase in the subcallosal cortex's cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen, a measure of brain tissue oxygen use, compared with each patient's pre-ketamine baseline.
More about the research
Why ketamine works is still unclear. Knowing how it works could help researchers design other treatments. Animal studies point to a chain of events in the brain. Ketamine blocks one type of glutamate receptor, the NMDA receptor (NMDAR). Glutamate is the brain's main excitatory chemical messenger. Blocking NMDARs is thought to set off a burst of glutamate release, which then stimulates a second receptor type, the AMPA receptor (AMPAR). That signal triggers brain plasticity, the rewiring of connections between neurons.
Why it matters
People with treatment-resistant depression have few options, and ketamine itself has limits as a treatment. Testing whether AMPA receptor activity drives ketamine's benefit could confirm a key mechanism in humans. That knowledge could guide the development of alternative drugs that produce the same rapid antidepressant effect.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Desmond Oathes
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Establish that TMS targeted with resting-state fMRI connectivity modulates the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), a deep mood-related region, using interleaved TMS/fMRI to record brain responses to stimulation.
Zafiris Daskalakis
University of California-San Diego, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare standard, clustered and sham maintenance rTMS over six months in 75 adults with treatment-resistant depression, testing which best sustains connectivity between the DLPFC and SGC measured by TMS-EEG.
Manish Jha
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Neuroscience·Early-career
Identify patterns of resting-state functional connectivity linked to irritability, using 7 Tesla fMRI in 30 healthy adults and 60 adults with major depressive disorder.
The school
Yale University: 73 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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