Mouse Party Assignment

See how various drugs disrupt activity at the synaptic level. Use the Mouse Party interactive to complete your worksheet.

With funky music and cutesy intoxicated mice, this is a pretty fun way to learn about the neurotransmitters involved in psychoactive drugs.

Vocab Review: Psych Disorders & Treatment

If you're looking for a quick study aid for this unit's test, try this: Pysch Disorders and Treatment Quizlet.

Quizlet is an online review site that allows you to create vocabulary lists and use them to generate flashcards, play matching games, and generally familiarize yourself with the terms. I've uploaded terms for this particular unit because so many students struggle with all the new vocab.

Mouse Party Assignment

Today's assignment will require you to access a cute/funny/funky informational module put together by our friends at the University of Utah. It will introduce you to various psychoactive drugs and demonstrate how these drugs influence the activity of specific neurotransmitters at the synaptic level.

Complete the worksheet by working through the "Mouse Party" demonstration. For each drug, you place the labeled mouse in the chair and listen/follow along with the description of its effects by clicking "next" at the appropriate time. Although it may not be possible if you are in a public setting (e.g. library), this demo is the most fun with the sound on because you hear the narration AND the funky music.


If you get done early, why not kill the time by amusing yourself with a rousing game of Cerebral Commando?! This is a game that challenges you to maintain an optimal level of dopamine particles by adding/subtracting receptor cites and assisting in the reuptake of dopamine. Level two poses a bigger challenge with the addition of cocaine! If your supervising teacher bothers you about it, tell him/her you are just studying psychology. :)

The Placebo Effect Treatment

During our recent class discussion on experimental design, I mentioned a well-known phenomenon in psychiatric medicine: the placebo effect. This is a situation where a patient responds as they believe they should under the influence of a drug, when in actuality they are receiving a placebo (inert substance). For example, reporting a decrease in pain after taking what you thought was an aspirin (but actually was a Skittle).

Last year, a study was published in the Journal of Internal Medicine that found 45% of surveyed doctors had prescribed a placebo to a patient during clinical practice. Obviously this raises questions about the ethics of using placebos in treatment (as opposed to simply in research).

What do you think? Is it okay for doctors to be prescribing placebos (and thus, in some ways, deceiving their patients)?

And, speaking of fake drugs, check out these:

FDA Approves Depressant for Annoyingly Cheerful (caution: strong language)

Progenitorivox: Best Drug Ever (just watch the side effects)

Panexa: Ask Your Doctor for a Reason to Take It

Thanks to MindHacks for the links.

Abuse of Antidepressant Drugs

During class today, one of my students presented an interesting question: what happens if you are not depressed, but you take an antidepressant (particularly an SSRI)? Would you still get a boost in mood?

I did not have a great answer for this question, since (unlike some other psychoactive medications) I hadn't heard any reports of abuse of antidepressants. Usually, if a drug can make you feel good, there's someone out there who will attempt to abuse it. After a little online sleuthing, the picture appears to look like this: some folks out there have been abusing antidepressants, but it seems to be mostly limited to those who already suffer from addictions and have run out of other options to get a "fix."

Consider this article on California jail inmates who have been faking mental illness to gain access to medication. Dated 4/6/09, the report indicates that prisoners had been falsely reporting symptoms in order to get doses of either Seroquel, an antipsychotic, or Wellbutrin, a popular antidepressant. Wellbutrin (bupropion) is NOT an SSRI, but rather a dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, and is often used in combination with SSRI's. Apparently, the prisoners who took it reported a speed-like effect. The article seems to suggest that the larger problem was with Seroquel (quetiapene), which produced a hypnotic-like effect in users who didn't really need it. The article also noted that the Santa Clara County Jail addressed the problem by substituting other antidepressants and antipsychotics in response to patient symptoms, and the problem has since subsided, though there were some interesting unintended consequences, notably an increase in depression among inmates (presumably previously masked by their drug use) and an incredible cost savings.

I was able to turn up one other article, this one on reported cases of abuse of SSRI's. Some limited reports of abuse have surfaced, though it appears the majority of abusers were attempting to use the SSRI's to replace some other addiction.