Scientific Research

Abstract

A mouse study showing that several psychedelics reopen the social reward learning critical period, with a time course proportional to the duration of acute subjective effects reported in humans. After pretreatment the critical period stayed open for about two weeks with psilocybin, about three weeks with LSD, and was still open at four weeks with ibogaine. The reopening was paralleled by a metaplastic restoration of oxytocin-mediated long-term depression in the nucleus accumbens, and gene expression data provide evidence that reorganization of the extracellular matrix is a common downstream mechanism.