This pilot study will examine the safety, tolerability, acceptability, and efficacy of combination psilocybin + psychotherapy to decrease PTSD symptoms. Participants will be randomized into two different treatment groups, allowing the investigators to directly compare PE augmented with psilocybin and psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. The Primary objective i...
This is an observational study which does NOT directly administer a psychedelic substance but rather recruits participants who are already participating in another clinical trial in which they may receive a serotonergic psychedelic. The goal of this observational study is to learn how the brain's information processing changes during and following administra...
Mystical experiences are characterized by a profound sense of interconnectedness and transcendence of ordinary reality. These experiences can facilitate feelings of connectedness with oneself and others and have been documented as leading to significant positive changes in thoughts, emotions, and behavior. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the...
Affective biases are important neuropsychological mechanisms by which emotions modulate cognition, behaviour and the subjective experience of mood. Previous studies have shown that the rapid-acting antidepressant, ketamine, and serotonergic psychedelic, psilocybin, modulate affective biases in a translational rat model. Both treatments differ from convention...
This article proposes a research agenda for psilocybin-assisted therapy focusing on the correlation between neural entropy and long-term cognitive flexibility.
This study will test the feasibility, safety, and evidence for efficacy of psilocybin administration in participants with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). This will serve as a preliminary proof of concept study for future larger studies aimed to investigate the utility, cognitive mechanisms, and neural correlates of this intervention. Participants in thi...
Introduction This computational modeling study introduces a novel Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) framework for optimizing single-dose psilocybin treatment protocols through personalized intervention modeling using publicly available mental health datasets. All results presented are derived from novel simulated data and predictive modeling only, no...
Abstract Background and Aims Psilocybin is a psychedelic compound that may hold promise for a wide range of human health conditions, yet the identification of therapeutic processes and mechanisms of action remains exploratory. We conducted a scoping review of pre-clinical behavioural investigations of psilocybin in non-human animals to identify behavioural e...
Psychedelics have emerged as potential therapeutics for substance use disorders, yet preclinical data validating their efficacy remain limited. Here, we investigated the effects of a clinically inspired dose-escalation protocol of psilocybin and ibogaine on extinction and cue-induced reinstatement in Wistar male rats following intravenous cocaine self-admini...
People with cancer often experience anxiety and depression following a diagnosis and can face barriers to accessing treatment for their mental health. An increasing number of patients are considering alternative approaches to managing their mental health symptoms, such as the psychedelic, psilocybin. A growing number of clinical trials show significant and e...
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...
Psilocybin-assisted interventions have shown rapid reductions in depressive symptoms in controlled clinical settings, raising questions about biological mechanisms supporting durability beyond the acute drug effect. [5,7] Mechanistic accounts increasingly focus on neuroplasticity as a candidate pathway linking transient serotonergic receptor activation to lo...
This is a double-blind, adaptive, 2-stage, multi-site, phase 2 randomized controlled clinical trial designed to evaluate effects of moderate and high dose psilocybin, relative to low-dose psilocybin control, in OUD patients who continue to use illicit opioids in spite of adherence to standard-of-care treatment with methadone. Up to 480 participations will be...
The escalating global burden of mental health disorders, coupled with the stagnation of innovation in traditional monoaminergic pharmacotherapy (e.g., SSRIs), has precipitated a critical need for novel therapeutic paradigms. This article presents a comprehensive systematic review of the so-called "Psychedelic Renaissance," focusing on the clinical resurgence...
The serotonergic psychedelic, psilocybin, shows potential for rapid and sustained antidepressant effects but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Using a chronic interferon-alpha-induced rat model of depression, we show acute psilocybin (0.3 mg/kg) reverses impaired reward-induced biases within 24hrs, with effects enduring for at least 7 days. This sugg...
People with cancer often experience anxiety and depression following a diagnosis and can face barriers to accessing treatment for their mental health. An increasing number of patients are considering alternative approaches to managing their mental health symptoms, such as the psychedelic, psilocybin. A growing number of clinical trials show significant and e...
Recent years have witnessed a rise in microdosing psilocybin. Individuals who engage in this practice report diverse motivations for use which suggests heterogeneity among microdosers. However, research to date has taken a monolithic approach to the examination of microdosers which may overlook potentially important differences. To address this limitation, w...
Humphry Osmond coined the term ‘psychedelic’ in 1956, conjoining ‘psyche’ for ‘soul’ and ‘delic’ from ‘dêlos’ for ‘to manifest’ or ‘illuminate.’ Soul-illumination is an adjective that describes a psychological state or process. However, Osmond’s intention was to use the adjective to name- not just a state- but a category of drug that can induce the subjectiv...
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...
Ketamine and psilocybin show potential as therapies for various mental illnesses, including major depressive disorder. However, further investigation into their neural mechanisms is required to understand their effects on the brain. By combining computational modelling with electroencephalography (EEG), we examine the effects of ketamine and psilocybin on hi...
