Researchers at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for Psychedelic Research and Tel Aviv Medical Center studied what happens in the brain when ketamine relieves pain. The work was published in Neuropsychopharmacology and announced on 13 October.
Thirty-seven healthy volunteers received ketamine in one session and a placebo in another while undergoing functional MRI and controlled pain stimuli. Ketamine reduced pain and increased dissociation, but the two effects were not linked: pain relief was tied to lower activity in pain-processing regions, and dissociation to changes in a network involved in the sense of self.
The authors say this suggests it may one day be possible to relieve pain without affecting consciousness. The study is small, involved only healthy people and does not yet show how to achieve such a treatment; the findings also do not apply to other psychedelics.
