Psychedelics reopen the social reward learning critical period

Abstract Psychedelics are a broad class of drugs defined by their ability to induce an altered state of consciousness 1,2 . These drugs have been used for millennia in both spiritual and medicinal contexts, and a number of recent clinical successes have spurred a renewed interest in developing psychedelic therapies 3–9 . Nevertheless, a unifying mechanism that can account for these shared phenomenological and therapeutic properties remains unknown. Here we demonstrate in mice that the ability to reopen the social reward learning critical period is a shared property across psychedelic drugs. Notably, the time course of critical period reopening is proportional to the duration of acute subjective effects…

• JH
  Johns Hopkins University
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: R01AG072305, K99NS122085, R01AG066768
• NI
  National Institute on Drug Abuse