Depression and anxiety disorders are debilitating diseases resulting in substantial economic costs to society. Traditional antidepressants often take weeks to months to positively affect mood and are ineffective for about 30% of the population. Alternatives, such as ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic capable of producing hallucinations, and the psychoactive tisane ayahuasca, have shown great promise due to their fast-acting nature and effectiveness in treatment-resistant populations. Here, we investigate the effects of N, N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the principle hallucinogenic component of ayahuasca, in rodent behavioral assays relevant to anxiety and depression using adult, male, Sprague-Dawley rats. We find that while DMT elicits initial anxiogenic responses in several of these paradigms, its long-lasting effects tend to reduce anxiety by facilitating the extinction of cued fear memory. Furthermore, DMT reduces immobility in the forced swim test, which is a characteristic behavioral response induced by many antidepressants. Our results demonstrate that DMT produces antidepressant and anxiolytic behavioral effects in rodents, warranting further investigation of ayahuasca and classical psychedelics as treatments for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

中文翻译：

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N，N-二甲基色胺对大鼠焦虑和抑郁相关行为的影响。

抑郁症和焦虑症使人衰弱，给社会造成了巨大的经济损失。传统的抗抑郁药通常需要数周至数月才能对情绪产生积极影响，并且对大约30％的人口无效。氯胺酮（一种能够产生幻觉的解离性麻醉剂）和精神活性的丹参药等替代品因其速效的性质和对耐药人群的有效性而显示出了巨大的希望。在这里，我们调查成年雄性Sprague-Dawley大鼠与焦虑和抑郁相关的啮齿动物行为分析中N，N-N-二甲基色胺（DMT）（ayahuasca的主要致幻成分）的作用。我们发现，尽管DMT在其中的一些范例中引发了最初的焦虑症反应，它的持久作用往往通过促进提示性恐惧记忆的消失而减轻焦虑。此外，DMT降低了强迫游泳测试中的不动感，这是由许多抗抑郁药引起的典型行为反应。我们的研究结果表明DMT在啮齿动物中产生抗抑郁和抗焦虑行为作用，值得进一步研究ayahuasca和经典迷幻药作为抑郁症和创伤后应激障碍的治疗方法。