Featured Paper of the Month – June 2023
Published in Biological Psychiatry by Marjorie Levinstein and Michael Michaelides, et al. of the NIDA IRP Biobehavioral Imaging and Molecular Neuropsychopharmacology Unit.
In this study, we show that S-ketamine not only binds to and activates MOR, but that this interaction is critical for its abuse liability. Specifically, we show that the opioid receptor antagonist naltrexone blocks brain activation by (S)-ketamine in the nucleus accumbens, a region crucial for reward, and also decreases lever pressing for (S)-ketamine in rats.