Indices of cortical plasticity after therapeutic sleep deprivation in patients with major depressive disorder

•Sleep deprivation (SD) is a rapid antidepressant treatment with yet unknown mechanisms•We used non-invasive indices of synaptic plasticity in patients with depression after one night of SD•We demonstrate altered inducibility of associative plasticity in SD-responders compared to SD-non-responders•The findings are consistent with synaptic mechanisms of rapid antidepressant treatment effects