Background: Social anxiety disorder is a chronic and disabling condition with limited response to standard therapies. Low-dose psilocybin may enhance the effectiveness of exposure-based treatments by modulating neural circuits associated with fear and avoidance. Virtual reality exposure therapy offers a controlled and individualized platform for intervention...
This article proposes a research agenda for psilocybin-assisted therapy focusing on the correlation between neural entropy and long-term cognitive flexibility.
Psychedelics, such as psilocybin, reorganise large-scale brain connectivity, yet how these changes are reflected across electrophysiological (electroencephalogram, EEG) and haemodynamic (functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) networks remains unclear. We present Brain-MGF, a multimodal graph fusion network for joint EEG-fMRI connectivity analysis. For ...
Introduction: Major depressive disorder (MDD) affects over 21 million adults in the U.S (NIMH, 2023) and remains a significant public health challenge. Despite the effectiveness of traditional medications, 30% of patients remains resistant. Little is known about the beliefs individuals hold regarding novel treatments, such as psilocybin and the motivations b...
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by recurrent distressing thoughts and substantial anxiety, accompanied by repetitive behaviors or mental rituals. Individuals with OCD often have diminished quality of life, and functional impairment. The disorder cause high personal, societal and economic costs. Current availab...
A recent randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group trial (NCT02061293) found that psilocybin-assisted therapy significantly improved drinking outcomes compared to an active placebo in adults with alcohol use disorder (AUD). In this secondary analysis, we assessed whether psilocybin-assisted therapy improved self-compassion and whether thes...
A recent randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group trial (NCT02061293) found that psilocybin-assisted therapy significantly improved drinking outcomes compared to an active placebo in adults with alcohol use disorder (AUD). In this secondary analysis, we assessed whether psilocybin-assisted therapy improved self-compassion and whether thes...
Objective Despite many decades of experimental studies and clinical trials involving a variety of psychedelic agents, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the effects of these substances on psychological experiences. As such, we designed and conducted a study to comprehensively characterise the effects of both psilocybin and 3,4-Methylenedioxymetha...
BACKGROUND: The psychedelic psilocybin has been posited as efficacious for the treatment of depression. However, the potential link between the intensity of acute psychedelic effects and long-term therapeutic outcomes remains undiscovered. Moreover, the impact of classical antidepressant drugs that modulate serotonergic activity on psilocybin's effects is a ...
Psychedelic-assisted therapies have demonstrated promising results in treating mental disorders, with results suggesting that the subjective intensity and quality of psychedelic experiences plays a significant role in mediating therapeutic effects. However, the strength of this association across diagnoses and treatment settings remains underexplored. We sea...
Neurobiological effects and psychological models propose that psychedelics may promote psychological flexibility, suggesting a transdiagnostic effect by disrupting maladaptive patterns. The objective of this study was therefore to investigate the determinants of psychological flexibility change following a psychedelic use. This retrospective online survey in...
Few population-based studies have examined associations between psychedelic use and mental health outcomes. This work describes characteristics of exclusive psychedelic mushroom use (referred to as PM use), PMs in combination with other psychedelic substances (multi-psychedelic or MP) use, and non-psychedelic use and explores mental health ratings in non-cli...
There is some evidence that the subjective effects of ketamine and other psychedelics like psilocybin are crucial for their therapeutic outcomes, such as treatment of depression or substance use disorder (SUD). We performed a meta-analysis and systematic review on the correlation of subjective symptoms and dissociation versus ketamine-induced therapeutic out...
Abstract Psychedelic drugs have profound effects on perception, cognition and mood. How psychedelics affect neural signaling to produce these effects remains poorly understood. We investigated the effect of the classic psychedelic psilocybin on neural activity patterns and spatial encoding in the retrosplenial cortex of head-fixed mice navigating on a treadm...
Abstract Background The underlying neurobiology of the complex autism phenotype remains obscure, although accumulating evidence implicates the serotonin system and especially the 5HT 2A receptor. However, previous research has largely relied upon association or correlation studies to link differences in serotonin targets to autism. To directly establish that...
Background: Immediate early genes (IEGs) are rapidly activated and initiate diverse cellular processes including neuroplasticity. We report the effect of psilocybin (PSIL), PSIL-containing psychedelic mushroom extract (PME) and 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) on expression of the IEGs, cfos, egr1, and egr2 in mouse somatosensory cortex (SSC). Methods: In our ini...
Psilocybin, an innate compound produced by mushrooms belonging to the Psilocybe genus, is primarily known for its agonistic effects on the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor. This receptor’s functioning is involved in many neurological processes. In the context of this research, our primary aim was to comprehensively investigate the influence of psilocybin as a serot...
To provide insights into neurophenomenological richness after psilocybin intake, we investigated the link between dynamical brain patterns and the ensuing phenomenological pattern after psilocybin intake. Healthy participants received either psilocybin (n=22) or placebo (n=27) while in ultra-high field 7T MRI scanning. Changes in the phenomenological pattern...
BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that serotonergic psychedelics (e.g. psilocybin), have rapid-acting and long-lasting antidepressant effects after a single dose. However, the mechanism underlying these effects remain unclear. One proposed mechanism is that these drugs promote neuroplasticity. However, this has not been conclusively demonstrated in humans. AIMS:...
Although early therapeutic research on psychedelics dates back to the 1940s, this field of investigation was met with many cultural and legal challenges in the 1970s. Over the past two decades, clinical trials using psychedelics have resumed. Therefore, the goal of this study was to (1) better characterize the recent uptrend in psychedelics in clinical trial...
