Start From Emergency Doctor

Chapter 420

The mechanism of action of antidepressants in the past is similar, that is, to control the disease by regulating the hormones in the body, but ketamine obviously has nothing to do with the hormones in the body.

In addition to being the main component of poisons, ketamine is clinically used as an anesthetic for minor operations or diagnostic procedures. In other words, it can block the excitability of the body.

Zhou Yuan immediately became nervous.

What part of the brain and which cells does ketamine act on, and why can it quickly have an antidepressant effect? !

At present, the treatment of depression in the world is very slow. It takes several weeks or even months. However, only 20-30% of patients are effective.

This also means that today’s antidepressants may only act indirectly, and humans’ understanding of the mechanism of depression is not clear and does not touch the core.

At this time, ketamine suddenly appeared in Zhou Yuan’s sight. It took effect within an hour and had a therapeutic effect on 70% to 80% of patients!

Zhou Yuan realized that this may be the key for human beings to further understand and treat depression…

The stimulant works and Zhou Yuan’s brain starts to run at full speed.

Towards one o’clock in the morning, Zhou Yuan suddenly raised his head and his eyes lit up.

He immediately dialed Sun Meng’s phone, while she was still working in the hospital, “Sun Meng, can the laboratory that the hospital gave me be used before?”

Sun Meng was a little puzzled, “It can be activated, do you want to start a project?”

She was on duty and was a little happy when she received Zhou Yuan’s call, but she didn’t expect Zhou Yuan to ask about the laboratory.

“Yes, I’m going to start the test right now, and you can help me apply with the hospital.”

Sun Meng was a little surprised.

When hospitalized, she was indeed responsible for these odds and ends.

“Understand, has the plan been written? How much funding is needed, and the expected research time…”

Before Sun Meng could finish asking, Zhou Yuan was stunned.

Need to write a plan?

Seeing Zhou Yuan’s silence, Sun Meng guessed it, and said, “What research do you plan to do, I’ll talk to the hospital directly… You can treat it specially, even if you don’t have a plan.”

Zhou Yuan is the person who Dean Fang promised to provide funding for scientific research unconditionally. He wants to carry out research. No one in Yanjing Traditional Chinese Medicine can stop him.

Zhou Yuan: “It is related to nerve firing, the main research direction is… the lateral habenular nucleus.”(Read more @ wuxiax.com)

“Outer habenula?”

Sun Meng was stunned for a moment.

The habenular nucleus is a very conservative brain structure that has existed since lower animals. It plays an important role in regulating the circadian rhythm and can also make instructions for action choices based on past terrorist experiences.

For example, when a predator or a crisis suddenly strikes, run away or stand still? This command and choice depends on the dead core.

If it loses its stiff nucleus, the animal will lose the escape behavior that gives the experience of terror. Although it is fearful, it will not run away and wait for death.

And the important reason that made Sun Meng stunned was that the lateral habenular nucleus was below the hippocampus!

In other words, the lateral habenular nucleus is related to the depression that Zhou Yuan is studying. It is the anti-reward center of the brain, which mediates most of the negative emotions of the brain, including fear, tension, anxiety, etc., and antagonizes the monoamine nucleus in the midbrain called the reward center.

To put it simply, the lateral habenular nucleus makes fear, tension and other negative emotions based on the external environment, while the reward center of the midbrain feedbacks positive emotions such as happiness and relaxation.

Zhou Yuan’s research on depression is not a secret. People who have had more contact with Zhou Yuan in the hospital know that he proposed to study the lateral habenula at this time. The purpose is self-evident.

Sun Meng nodded: “Understood, I will apply immediately. When do you plan to start?”

“tomorrow!”

After hanging up the phone, Zhou Yuan immediately began to design the experiment.

Although he had the entire experiment process in his mind, it took too long to complete the experiment. Zhou Yuan did not spend so much time on it, and could only participate in the most critical part.

Now that you have joined the national lung transplant program, you must make good use of it.

In addition to lung transplant talents at Zhan Ting, there are many scholars who specialize in experiments. Zhou Yuan hopes to entrust this experiment to them.

The purpose of the experiment is very simple, to explore the principle of antidepressant ketamine.

In the previous five-hour study, Zhou Yuan realized that ketamine is likely to affect the activity of the lateral habenular nucleus.

Depression has a very important connection with the lateral habenular nucleus. The negative emotions manifested by depression are all related to the feedback from the lateral habenular nucleus.. ……

As we all know, neurons send messages downstream by firing, and the lateral habenular nucleus wants to transmit messages from the brain, which will cause various emotions, and must also be fired.

So… is the discharge that causes depression different from the normal discharge of negative emotions?

Zhou Yuan designed two experiments to determine whether mice are depressed, forced swimming, and sugar water preference.

When a mouse falls into a pool, normal mice will show an active struggle to survive, while depression mice will show desperate behavior, giving up the struggle the moment they fall into the pool, and enter a state of suspension.

The other sugar water preference experiment is based on mice’s love of sugar water. Depressed mice will lose interest in sugar water, which will reflect the lack of animal pleasure.

Next, detect the discharge mode of the lateral habenula of the two groups of mice, and simulate the discharge of the depression mice to normal mice, and observe whether the normal mice will become depressed!

Early the next morning, Zhan Ting received news from Zhou Yuan. After a brief surprise, he immediately contacted the team members who were in Yanjing and rushed to Yanjing Chinese Medicine to assist Zhou Yuan in research.

After Zhou Yuan sent the experiment plan to the team members, he squinted for almost half an hour, drank three more bottles of energy medicine, and was ready to go to work.

As for why you have to sleep for half an hour…

After the stimulant lost its effect, Zhou Yuan suddenly felt that he had become an idiot, and he had to rely on sleep to cushion this emotion, otherwise Zhou Yuan would spend the whole day in this shadow.

After taking the stimulant, Zhou Yuan discovered that the stimulant actually had side effects.

For example, the mental exhaustion is too alarming. Usually Zhou Yuan only needs one bottle of energy potion to recover his state. This time, he used up three bottles.

Moreover, Zhou Yuan’s ears are very hot now, his mental function is out of balance, and his mood is a bit unstable. These are all signs of overuse of the brain.

But these are just minor problems. They are nothing compared to those stimulant drugs, and they can come back after a short break.

Stimulants can also be regarded as system-produced, the only item with minor side effects. .