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The popular party drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), otherwise known as ecstasy, promotes feelings of friendliness, warmth, and euphoria in the user. These effects have spurred investigations into the drug’s potential to enhance psychotherapy sessions for patients with autism or post-traumatic stress disorder. However, concerns of misuse have held up clinical applications. Today (December 11) in Science Translational Medicine, researchers show in mice that the drug’s prosocial effects and potential for abuse are controlled by two separate neurological mechanisms, raising the possibility of designing new drugs that could elicit the benefits without the downsides.
“It’s a very interesting study,” says emeritus pharmacologist David Nichols of Purdue University who was not involved in the research. “The experiments were really detailed and [the authors] really attempted to pin down, at least in mice, how MDMA is producing its prosocial effects, which is presumably related to how it acts in humans.”
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