Repeated low doses of psilocybin increase resilience to stress, lower compulsive actions, and strengthen cortical connections to the paraventricular thalamic nucleus in rats.

Psilocybin (a classic serotonergic psychedelic drug) has received appraisal for use in psychedelic-assisted therapy of several psychiatric disorders. A less explored topic concerns the use of repeated low doses of psychedelics, at a dose that is well below the psychedelic dose used in psychedelic-assisted therapy and often referred to as microdosing. Psilocybin microdose users frequently report increases in mental health, yet such reports are often highly biased and vulnerable to placebo effects.

Prenatal nicotine exposure in mice induces sex-dependent anxiety-like behavior, cognitive deficits, hyperactivity, and changes in the expression of glutamate receptor associated-genes in the prefrontal cortex.

In rodents, prenatal nicotine exposure (PNE) has been associated with increased risk for development of cognitive and emotional disturbances, but the findings are somewhat conflicting. Lack of behavioral alterations following PNE could be due to the variety of methods available for nicotine delivery, exposure time and species used, with inbred strains being mostly employed. Such differences suggest the need to investigate the behavioral phenotype in each PNE model available if we are to find models with enhanced translational value.