Aghajanian, George

George K. Aghajanian Yale School of Medicine New Haven, CT USA... 

LSD and Serotonergic Dorsal Raphe Neurons Intracellular Studies In Vivo and In Vitro George K. Aghajanian... 

I was still the only psychiatrist in the lab, but this was about to change with the welcome arrival of George Aghajanian, who had just finished his psychiatry training at Yale. George was serious about research as a career, having studied LSD and published papers on the subject under the guidance of Daniel X. Freedman while he was still a medical student. 

George Aghajanian, MD. A true scientist, George has become the nation s acknowledged expert on the mode of action of LSD in the brain. He has long been a good friend as well. 

Oscar Bing, George Aghajanian and I then put our heads together and decided to design a more reliable test of LSD s inhalation effectiveness. We also wanted to ascertain whether different chemical forms of LSD were equally potent. A third objective was to compare the effects of two doses given two weeks apart. 

In addition to these experiments, George Aghajanian proceeded to see if Thorazine would reverse LSD-induced performance impairment. At the time, Thorazine was still the most widely accepted medication for controlling bad trips. George found that it raised NF scores only slightly and did not shorten the overall duration of impairment. Surprisingly, Thorazine sometimes even delayed the final return of performance scores to baseline. 

When George Aghajanian and Fred Sidell decided to investigate the usefulness of antidotes other than physostigmine, scopolamine became the belladonnoid of choice, since its duration of action was short and both nursing and volunteer time required to conduct treatment studies were limited to a single day of observations. 

Because chlorpromazine (CPZ, aka Thorazine) had commonly been used clinically to treat belladonna-induced delirium, George Aghajanian tested its effectiveness in reversing cognitive impairment in NF% scores when given in doses of either 25 or 50 mg of Thorazine at 45 minutes (Fig. 72). Decrements in NF% scores were actually increased by chlorpromazine - clearly an adverse effect on cognitive function rather than a beneficial one. 

George Aghajanian Larry Gutterman John Payne Nancy Bowman Ernest Clovis... 

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