Poster - #VH-44462 - Keywords: psychedelics gene brain acute scoping PRISMA plasticity prefrontal hippocampus

Acute and sub-acute brain gene expression changes with classical 5-HT2A psychedelics: A systematic scoping review of the preclinical literature

Patrick A. McConnell, M.S., Ph.D., Jackson Raffety, B.S., Andrew Li, B.S., Syed Rahim, B.S., Christian Valtierra, M.S., Eric Steinberg, B.S., Adam Gazzaley, M.D., Ph.D., Robin Carhart-Harris, Ph.D., Lorenzo Pasquini, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco

ABSTRACT:
Background: Classical psychedelics induce significant changes in brain function 1 and structure 2 with selective gene expression changes as the putative underlying molecular substrate. Recent systematic review work has interrogated these mechanisms3,4 but was broad in scope. We focused on a narrower scope, reviewing acute (<12 hr) and sub-acute (<48 hr) effects of classical psychedelics only on direct neural measures of gene expression change (mRNA). Objectives: To ascertain whether further meta-analytic or bioinformatics-based analyses may be feasible and warranted, we conducted a systematic scoping review of the literature to address the following primary research questions: (1) What classical psychedelics are most frequently reported? (2) What general brain regions are reported on? (3) What preclinical models are reported on? (4/5) What are the most common genes reported as increased or decreased expression?