Questions tagged [psychopharmacology]
For questions about the scientific study of the effects of pharmaceutical and general drugs on perception, behavior, mood and cognition.
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Has it ever been quantified the extent to which “culture” influences specifically what kinds of research gets done?
I would like to know about a technique for showing rigorously and quantitatively the way in which certain kinds of scientific research (in psychology) never get done because of cultural reasons, for ...
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Could opiate addictions be treated with esterase inhibitors?
Since heroin is a prodrug (i.e inactive) and must be metabolized into morphine by certain esterase enzymes in order to produce psychoactive effects, would some esterase inhibitors theoretically ...
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Medical treatment for depression
Should depression be treated with excitatory or inhibitory medications?
Normally I have seen inhibitory drugs being prescribed for depression, hence my question.
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Is there good evidence that long-term stimulant usage in children has no harmful effect when stopped?
Essentially, I am looking for an RCT done on children, where they went on a stimulant drug for at least 3 years, and then stopped administering the drug.
What I'm worried about is long-term lower ...
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Is it believed that ketamine has less side effects compared to SSRIs?
I was told that recent research shows that ketamine is equally effective to, and not more effective than, SSRIs when used as a regular medication, for example as a nasal spray.
However, is it believed ...
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Why do SSRIs take multiple weeks to reach their full effect?
What is it about SSRIs that they require 2-4 weeks for their long-term effect to become present?
Is this the result of small accumulations over time in some aspect of the brain?
Are there other ...
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Why are there substances that give positive psychological effects but become unhealthy addictions?
In a very general way, why is the brain a system that responds euphorically in response to certain stimulants yet over time that substance may be addictive and have negative health effects?
What is it ...
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Is there any medication which is molecularly similar to alcohol?
I have found alcohol to have beneficial and desirable effects on me, and I have been exploring the question of why alcohol is not given the same level of pharmaceutical legitimacy as other medicines ...
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Are self-reported depression scores from inpatient facilities used to measure the efficacy of different pharmaceuticals?
In the United States, patients with clinical depression are somtimes hospitalized for sucidal ideation or attempted suicide. It is common practice to prevent patients from discharging themselves from ...
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Caffeine modulating substances in coffee
From personal experimentation I know that caffeine affects me differently than coffee. Are there any known caffeine modulating substances found in coffee?
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Are there methods of evaluating the effects of psychoactive drugs that use free-form verbal reports?
If one wished to study the effects of a psychoactive drug such as LSD, what strikes me as a natural primary starting point would be to ask participants what they actually experienced. For example, ...
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What are the pharmacodynamics (Ki nM) of the monoamine neurotransmitters?
Ok, so any psychoactive drug will have different affinities for different receptor types. For instance, sertraline has an extreme affinity for the SERT and very little affinity for the 5-HT1A receptor....
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How does the chemical structure of a drug determine potency?
I'm rather new to neuropharmacology, and I am particularly interested in why some psychotropic medications are more potent than others despite being in the same category of one another, (i.e.: ...
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"Reverse Tolerance" Hypothetical
Let me use Caffeine as an example for this question, because it's a classically understood case of drug tolerance.
Caffeine is an adenosine antagonist; it works by blocking the adenosine receptors in ...
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What is the size limit of molecules entering the intracellular sections of a neuron?
As voltage sensitive organic dyes enter the inside of neurons and quantum dots are seeking to replace these due to their higher quantum yield, I was wondering what the seize limit is, as quantum dot ...
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