An unprecedented look at dopamine in the brain reveals that psychosis drugs get developed with the wrong neurons in mind.

  • hoodlem@hoodlem.me
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is great. I hope we start to see more drugs developed more like this technique:

    With a combination of tiny lenses, microscopes, cameras, and fluorescent molecules, Parker’s lab can observe thousands of individual neurons in mice, in real time, as they experience different antipsychotic drugs.

    And begin to wean off some of this:

    The first step in his experiment was to mimic excess dopamine in mice by giving them amphetamines. “You inject them with amphetamine, and they run more. If you inject them with antipsychotics first, they run less. That’s the state of the art,” Parker says.