How ketamine may alleviate depressive symptoms

For some of those with severe depression, if traditional antidepressants have proven ineffective, they may have been prescribed the powerful anaesthetic ketamine, which has shown great promise in alleviating depressive symptoms in some people. But the exact reason as to why, and what areas of the brain that ketamine actually influences, has remained something of a mystery. Now however, a study from Zejiang University School of Medicine in China points strongly towards a part of the brain called the lateral habenula, responsible for emotional processing and reward function. If what they say is true, the finding could lead to the introduction of ketamine as a mainstream treatment. I’ve been speaking to David Nutt of Imperial College London, and formerly the UK government’s drug tsar, about the paper’s findings...