About 30-50% of patients with advanced illness experience depression, anxiety, or decreased sense of purpose and autonomy. Together, these are called psychological distress. Treatment options such as medication and therapy are available; however, they do not always work and can be time-consuming and expensive. We need treatments that work well, quickly, and ...
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic neuropsychiatric condition characterized by intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors that cause distress and functional impairment worldwide. Although selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and cognitive behavioral therapy are first-line treatments, a considerable proportion of patients show an insufficien...
Abstract Psilocybin induces profound alterations in consciousness, yet prevailing neural models often describe a monolithic change in brain connectivity that may not fully capture the multifaceted nature of the psychedelic state. To test the hypothesis of a composite neural state, this study applied a data-driven framework, connectome independent component a...
Mental disorders represent a major global health problem, with depression being one of the most prevalent and disabling conditions worldwide. Growing evidence suggests that the serotonergic system, particularly the 5-HT2A receptor, plays an important role in modulating mood and cognitive processes, constituting a key pharmacological target for several psycho...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and interaction, restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, and sensory processing alterations, frequently accompanied by anxiety, emotional dysregulation, and other psychiatric comorbidities. Despite advances in be...
This protocol describes a systematic review and meta-analysis assessing the efficacy and safety of classic serotonergic psychedelics and related serotonergic ergoline or lysergamide compounds in cluster headache and migraine. The review will include clinical studies evaluating psilocybin, psilocin, LSD, LSA, DMT/ayahuasca, mescaline, BOL-148 / 2-bromo-LSD / ...
In recent decades, the psychedelic psilocybin has been studied as a potential treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD), offering an alternative to traditional antidepressants. However, the brain changes underlying the clinical effects of different interventions remain unclear. Here, we investigated the effects of psilocybin and a conventional antidepres...
Background: This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluates the efficacy and safety of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) for adults with major depressive disorder (MDD). Methods: A PROSPERO-registered search (CRD42024561979) of CENTRAL, Scopus, PsycINFO, and MEDLINE (2010-2024) identified clinical trials assessing PAP. Risk of bias was assessed usin...
Psychedelic drugs are poised to become mainstream treatments, yet we lack a circuit-level account of how they reshape brain activity. Emerging evidence suggests that multiple psychedelic compounds modulate activity in the brain's default mode network (DMN), often interpreted as either increased or decreased bottom-up hierarchical processing. Most imaging stu...
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental condition in which prenatal stress and long-lasting disruptions of excitatory-inhibitory (E/I) balance have been implicated as key vulnerability factors. Although established pharmacological and behavioral treatments are effective for many individuals, they are not universally ...
Chronic pain is common, costly, and for many, remains inadequately treated by existing pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic approaches. In parallel with growing dissatisfaction with conventional therapies, classic serotonergic psychedelics, such as psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ayahuasca, N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and mescaline, administer...
Abstract Background Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a clinically distinguishable bereavement-related condition characterized by persistent yearning, identity disruption, and impaired functioning, formalized in DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 (6L72) and empirically distinguishable from but frequently co-occurring with major depressive disorder. Approximately 7 to 10 pe...
Maintaining effective blinding is a major methodological challenge in psychedelic research. This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of blinding integrity in 120 healthy volunteers who received either psilocybin, MDMA, or methylphenidate (active placebo) in a double-blind, randomized controlled trial. Using a multi-level assessment incorporating forced...
Background: Advanced Alzheimer's disease (AD) is generally regarded as a stage of irreversible functional decline. Psilocybin is known to transiently alter large-scale brain network dynamics and to induce plasticity-related mechanisms in preclinical models, yet clinical data in advanced dementia remain lacking. Case presentation: We report the case of an oct...
ABSTRACT Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is characterized by chronic symptoms, impaired functioning, and limited response to conventional antidepressant therapy. Contemporary reviews have highlighted increasing interest in psilocybin-assisted therapy as a mechanistically novel approach for depressive disorders, grounded in early feasibility work demonst...
Mescaline, a 5-HT2A agonist psychedelic used ceremonially for millennia, lacks neuroimaging characterization due to its Schedule 1 status. Using pharmacological and resting-state fMRI in awake rats, we report mescaline's first comprehensive neurobiological profile. Acutely, mescaline produced cerebellar-selective BOLD suppression, suggesting functional disco...
Importance: The Oregon Psilocybin Services (OPS) program is the first statewide, regulated framework for legal psilocybin in the U.S. Analyzing inaugural-year utilization and safety is essential for informing policy and equity monitoring. Methods: We conducted a descriptive analysis of statewide aggregate data from the OPS Public Dashboard (January 1-Decembe...
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Methamphetamine (MA) use disorder is associated with widespread disruption of large-scale brain networks involved in cognitive control, attention, and salience processing. Resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) provides a means to characterize these alterations; however, little is known about the capacity for functional network reorga...
