Acute psilocybin enhances cognitive flexibility in rats.

ABSTRACT: Psilocybin has been shown to improve symptoms of depression and anxiety when combined with psychotherapy or other clinician-guided interventions. To understand the neural basis for this pattern of clinical efficacy, experimental and conceptual approaches that are different than traditional laboratory models of anxiety and depression are needed. A potential novel mechanism is that acute psilocybin improves cognitive flexibility, which then enhances the impact of clinician-assisted interventions. Consistent with this idea, we find that acute psilocybin robustly improves cognitive flexibility in male and female rats using a task where animals switched between previously learned strategies in response to uncued changes in the environment. Psilocybin did not influence Pavlovian reversal learnin

SUBMITTER: Torrado Pacheco A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10209151 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature