Acute and chronic effects of ketamine on semantic priming: modeling schizophrenia?

Acute administration of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist ketamine induces schizophrenia-like symptoms in healthy volunteers; furthermore, a window on ketamine's chronic effects is provided by regular recreational users. The current study utilized both acute ketamine administration in healthy volunteers and chronic ketamine abusers to investigate semantic processing, one of the key cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Semantic processing was examined using a semantic priming paradigm.