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In the 1990s he was a psychiatry professor, mentoring then associate professor John Krystal at Yale and trying to figure out how a deficit of serotonin played into depression.
在20世紀90年代，丹尼斯·查尼是一名精神病學教授，指導耶魯大學當時的副教授約翰·克里斯托，試圖弄清楚血清素缺乏如何導致抑郁癥。
Back then, depression research was all about serotonin. The 1987 approval of Prozac, the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI,
當時，抑郁癥研究都關注血清素。1987年批準了抗抑郁藥Prozac，這是首款選擇性血清素再攝取抑制劑（SSRI），
ushered in an era of what people in the industry call me-too drug development, research that seeks to improve on existing medicines rather than exploring new approaches.
開創了業內人士稱之為模仿性跟進的藥物開發時代，即研究旨在改善現有藥物藥效，而不是探索新療法。
Within this narrow range, pharmaceutical companies churned out blockbuster after blockbuster.
在這個狹窄的研究范疇內，制藥公司大量生產出很多暢銷藥品。
One in eight Americans age 12 and older reported using antidepressants within the past month, according to a survey conducted from 2011 to 2014 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
美國疾病控制和預防中心2011年至2014年進行的一項調查顯示，八分之一的12歲及以上的美國人在過去一個月內使用過抗抑郁藥。
Charney was a depression guy; Krystal was interested in schizophrenia. Their curiosity led them to the same place: the glutamate system, what Krystal calls the "main information highway of the higher brain."
查尼研究抑郁癥，而克里斯托對精神分裂癥很感興趣，好奇心把他們引向同一個地方：谷氨酸系統，也就是克里斯托所說的“高階大腦的主要信息高速公路”。
(Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter, which helps brain cells communicate. It's considered crucial in learning and memory formation.)
（谷氨酸是一種興奮性神經遞質，可以幫助腦細胞進行交流。它被認為是學習和記憶形成的關鍵。）
They had already used ketamine to temporarily produce schizophrenialike symptoms, to better understand glutamate's role in that condition.
他們已經使用氯胺酮暫時產生類似精神分裂癥的癥狀，以更好地了解谷氨酸在這種情況下的作用。
In the mid-1990s they decided to conduct a single-dose study of ketamine on nine patients (two ultimately dropped out) at the Yale-affiliated VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven to see how depressed people would react to the drug.
20世紀90年代中期，他們決定在西漢文市康涅狄格州附屬耶魯大學退伍軍人醫療系統中對9名患者（其中兩名患者最終退出試驗）進行一次氯胺酮單劑量研究，以了解抑郁癥患者對藥物的反應。
Outside the field of anesthesiology, ketamine is known, if it's known at all, for its abuse potential.
在麻醉學領域之外，氯胺酮因其存在可能被濫用的風險而廣為人知。
Street users sometimes take doses large enough to enter what's known as a "K hole," a state in which they're unable to interact with the world around them.
街頭毒品吸食者有時會服用大劑量氯胺酮，進入所謂的“K洞”狀態（K是氯胺酮英文首字母），在這種狀態下他們無法與周圍世界互動。
Over the course of a day, those recreational doses can be as much as 100 times greater than the tiny amount Charney and Krystal were planning to give to patients.
在一天內，用于消遣而服用的氯胺酮劑量可能比查尼和克里斯托計劃給病人服用的微量劑量高出100倍。
Nonetheless, they decided to monitor patients for 72 hours—well beyond the two hours that ketamine produces obvious behavioral effects— just to be careful not to miss any negative effects that might crop up.
盡管如此，他們決定對患者進行72小時監測，氯胺酮產生明顯行為影響為兩小時，他們的監測時間遠遠超過了這個時間，這樣做只是不想錯過任何可能產生的負面影響。
"If we had done the typical thing that we do with these drug tests," Krystal says, "we would have completely missed the antidepressant effect of ketamine."
克里斯托說：“如果我們只做有關這些藥物測試的常規性工作，我們就無法監測到氯胺酮抗抑郁的藥效?！?/p>
