Back

Psilocybin rapidly, but not immediately, reverses reward learning deficits in a durable manner in an inflammatory rat model of depressive symptoms

Hinchcliffe, J.; Thomas, C.; Gilmour, G.; Robinson, E.

2026-01-15 neuroscience
10.64898/2026.01.14.699553 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The serotonergic psychedelic, psilocybin, shows potential for rapid and sustained antidepressant effects but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Using a chronic interferon-alpha-induced rat model of depression, we show acute psilocybin (0.3 mg/kg) reverses impaired reward-induced biases within 24hrs, with effects enduring for at least 7 days. This suggests psilocybin can restore blunted reward processing, an effect which could significantly contribute to its sustained antidepressant effects.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.