Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Jun 19, 2021; 11(6): 201-214
Published online Jun 19, 2021. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v11.i6.201
How do serotonergic psychedelics treat depression: The potential role of neuroplasticity
Hewa Artin, Sidney Zisook, Dhakshin Ramanathan
Hewa Artin, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States
Sidney Zisook, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Diego, San Diego, CA 92093, United States
Dhakshin Ramanathan, Department of Psychiatry, VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA 92161, United States
Author contributions: All authors participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for its content; all authors provided substantial contributions to conception and design of the manuscript, contributed to drafting the article and revising it critically for important intellectual content and provided final approval of the version that was submitted.
Supported by Department of Veteran’s Affairs, Veteran’s Health Administration (Career Development Award), No. 7IK2BX003308 (to Ramanathan D); Start-up Funds from the UCSD Department of Psychiatry (to Ramanathan D); and The Burroughs Welcome Fund (Career Award for Medical Scientists), No. 1015644 (to Ramanathan D).
Conflict-of-interest statement: Dr. Zisook S receives grant support from COMPASS Pathways.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hewa Artin, MD, Doctor, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States. hartin@health.ucsd.edu
Received: February 15, 2021
Peer-review started: February 15, 2021
First decision: March 30, 2021
Revised: April 7, 2021
Accepted: May 20, 2021
Article in press: May 20, 2021
Published online: June 19, 2021
Processing time: 116 Days and 1.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Depression is a common mental disorder and one of the leading causes of disability around the world. Monoaminergic antidepressants often take weeks to months to work and are not effective for all patients. This review specifically compares the effects of serotonergic psychedelics with other antidepressants on plasticity at multiple levels of nervous system functioning.