Brain State Dynamics in Ketamine-Induced Dissociation Resemble Those in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
Biological psychiatry global open science March 1, 2026 Noam Goldway, Taly Markovits, Naomi Fine et al. 1 citation
Dissociation—feeling detached from one's body, environment, or self—often accompanies posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but its neural basis is poorly understood. Using network control theory on resting-state functional MRI data, researchers examined brain dynamics during dissociative states in healthy volunteers given ketamine (n=30) and in PTSD patients (n=78) before and after treatment. Ketamine induced brain dynamics similar to those in untreated PTSD patients: increased dominance of the default mode network (DMN) meta-state and decreased dominance of the somatomotor network (SOM) meta-state. After treatment, reduced DMN meta-state dominance correlated with fewer dissociative symptoms. Treated patients also showed more organized, less entropic brain states, though ketamine did not significantly alter entropy indices. Dissociative states, whether drug-induced or clinical, involve increased DMN and reduced SOM dominance.