Ketamine is a psychoactive substance with well-known medical and non-medical uses. After having had particularly its remarkably rapid antidepressant activity studied over the past two decades, it is now used as an antidepressant for pharmacoresistant depressive disorder. At subanesthetic doses ketamine blocks not only NMDA receptors, but acts also through mechanisms independent of this blockade.
Key words: antidepressants – dissociative anesthetics – ketamine – NMDA receptor