The Impact of Intravenous Ketamine on Attentional Bias: Probing Mechanisms of Rapid-Acting Antidepressant Effects in Two Clinical Studies.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Ketamine is known for its rapid antidepressant effect, but its impact on affective information processing (including attentional bias [AB], a putative cognitive mechanism of depression) remains largely unexplored. We leveraged a novel measurement of AB and sought to 1) establish adequate test-retest reliability and validity among participants with depression prior to ketamine treatment and 2) harness a single dose of ketamine to assess mechanistic shifts in AB and their relationship to antidepressant efficacy.

Methods

A novel dual probe video task was used to index AB toward sad film clips. In study 1, treatment-seeking adults with moderate-to-severe depression (N = 40) completed the task at baseline, 1-week retest, and 1-month retest; a subset of participants (n 

SUBMITTER: Woody ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11954668 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature