Horse tranquilizer (Ketamine) is a very useful drug if used responsibly. It can be night club's hallucinogenic of choice, it's used as a battlefield anesthetic and it can pacify those pesky grizzly bears that are after your "picinik baskets".
Ketamine is also useful for improving symptoms in depressed people. And unlike Prozac, that takes almost a month to start doing it's thing, the "Special K" kicks in after just 24 hours.
Scientists pondered why that is for a while now with no clear answer. Understandably so, considering that if one runs most of the experiments in night clubs, there's little to no motivation the morning after to do any sciency work.
Yet just the other day, Dr. Bill Deakin, a neuroscientist at the University of Manchester, decided to take the studies in a new direction. Shooting 30 healthy men with some tranquilizer darts, apparently, he took minute-by-minute brain scans of the victims. I mean - experimental subjects.
What he found was something neither he nor other doctor-bodies of his expected - "ketamine restores to normal the orbifrontal cortex, an area of the brain located above the eyes that is overactive in depressed people."
In effect, ketamine switches off of the depression center.
This finding could lead the way to a new class of anti-depression medications. Hopefully it will and soon, since Prozac is not working!!! :P
link: Night club drug could ease depression: scientists
Sunday
"Special K" Fights Depression
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