Adolescent exposure to the psychedelic 25C-NBOMe in rats induces lasting competitive avoidance through disrupted hippocampal-prefrontal synchrony.

Adolescent exposure to 25C-NBOMe causes lasting social avoidance linked to disrupted hippocampal-prefrontal synchrony in rats.

• Why it matters: Understanding how psychedelics impact social circuits during adolescence is crucial because this developmental window is sensitive to lasting behavioral changes, yet the mechanisms remain unclear.
• What they did: The study involved repeated 25C-NBOMe exposure in adolescent male rats and used multisite recordings to assess neural synchrony, focusing on theta coherence between the ventral hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex, along with chemogenetic manipulations.
• The result: Findings show that adolescent psychedelic exposure reduces hippocampal-prefrontal theta coherence, leading to persistent social avoidance, which can be reversed or induced through targeted chemogenetic modulation of this pathway.