Introduction: Cognitive flexibility is essential for behavioral adaptation in response to environmental changes and is impaired in various neuropsychiatric disorders. The serotonergic psychedelic psilocybin has shown potential in enhancing cognitive flexibility, although with mixed results. In this study, we investigated the effects of psilocybin on cognitiv...
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Drug discrimination procedures have made important contributions to the pre-clinical investigation of psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT). One of the most important being to highlight the critical role of central 5-HT2A rece...
BackgroundPsychedelics, particularly psilocin, are increasingly being studied for their mind-altering effects and potential therapeutic applications in psychiatry. Visual hallucinations, especially the illusion of motion in static images, are a hallmark of their action. Despite growing interest, the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood, as their sy...
Despite significant advances in symptom management for patients affected by serious illness, physicians lack effective legal treatments for individuals suffering from demoralization, death anxiety, and existential distress. Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy employs psilocybin-containing mushrooms or synthetic psilocybin grounded in indigenous traditions and ...
This article presents an exploration of naturally occurring Class-A magic mushroom markets in the UK. It aims to challenge some of the mainstream narratives about drug markets and to identify features of this specific market, which will extend our understanding of how illegal drug markets operate and are structured more generally. The research presented comp...
Introduction: Psilocybin has shown long-lasting antidepressant effects in preclinical and clinical trials, but the mechanisms responsible are unclear. As both passive coping strategies and pattern separation deficits are characteristics of major depression, we used adult female rats subjected to adolescent chronic restraint stress (aCRS) to investigate the e...
Lysergic acid Diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, and psilocin are being intensively evaluated as potential therapeutics to treat depression, anxiety, substance use disorder, and a host of other psychiatric illnesses. Pre-clinical investigation of these compounds in rodent models forms a key component of their drug development process. In this review, we will su...
BackgroundPsychedelics are receiving renewed attention within Western medicine as they represent potential treatments for many difficult-to-treat mental health disorders. However, psychedelic science is limited in its focus and inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities. Hence, this study examines whether race and ethnicity moderate the associations that natu...
Recent trials with psychedelics in major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression showed remarkable improvements in depressive symptoms that can last for up to several months after even a single administration. The lack of an appropriate placebo control group-as patients are often able to discriminate the subjective effects of the drug-and an i...
Magic mushrooms are naturally occurring fungi that are considered hallucinogenic drugs because they contain psilocybin and psilocin. These substances are controlled in almost every country in the world, so the use, possession, cultivation, and sale of magic mushrooms are prohibited in whole or in part. Despite this, the abuse of magic mushrooms continues and...
Serotonergic hallucinogens such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) induce head twitches in rodents via 5-HT receptor activation. The goal of the present investigation was to determine whether a correlation exists between the potency of hallucinogens in the mouse head-twitch response (HTR) paradigm and their reported potencies in other species, specifically ...
Introduction Psilocybin (PSI) has persistent antidepressant efficacy in human trials. We have shown one dose of PSI to significantly decrease depressive-like behavior in male Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats for at least five weeks without losing efficacy. However, the outcome assay we used to evaluate depressive-like behavior, the forced swim test (FST), has been cr...
Studies have shown that both serotonin and glutamate receptor systems play a crucial role in the mechanisms underlying drug-induced synesthesia. The specific nature of these mechanisms, however, continues to remain elusive. Here we propose two distinct hypotheses for how synesthesia triggered by hallucinogens in the serotonin-agonist family may occur. One hy...
Serotonergic hallucinogens, such as (+)-lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, and mescaline, are somewhat enigmatic substances. Although these drugs are derived from multiple chemical families, they all produce remarkably similar effects in animals and humans, and they show cross-tolerance. This article reviews the evidence demonstrating the serotonin 5-HT...
Psilocybin is a substance of natural origin, occurring in hallucinogenic mushrooms (most common in the Psilocybe family). After its synthesis in 1958 research began on its psychoactive properties, particularly strong effects on visual perception and spatial orientation. Due to the very broad spectrum of psilocybin effects research began on the different rang...
The serotonin 5-HT(2A) receptor is the major target of psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline, and psilocybin. Serotonergic psychedelics induce profound effects on cognition, emotion, and sensory processing that often seem uniquely human. This raises questions about the validity of animal models of psychedelic drug action. None...
RationaleBoth glutamate and serotonin (5-HT) play a key role in the pathophysiology of emotional biases. Recent studies indicate that the glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist ketamine and the 5-HT receptor agonist psilocybin are implicated in emotion processing. However, as yet, no study has systematically compared their contribution to ...
RationaleThe widely available hallucinogen salvinorin A is a unique example of a plant-derived compound selective for kappa-opioid receptors and may produce effects distinct from those of other compounds with classic hallucinogenic or dissociative properties which are also abused in humans.ObjectivesThe objective of this study is to characterize the salvinor...
N,N-dipropyltryptamine (DPT) is a synthetic tryptamine hallucinogen which has been used psychotherapeutically in humans, but has been studied preclinically only rarely. In the present studies, DPT was tested in a drug-elicited head-twitch assay in mice, and in rats trained to discriminate lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), N,N-dimethyl-4-phosphoryloxytryptami...
