Exploring the intricate relationship between brain's structure and function, and how this affects subjective experience is a fundamental pursuit in neuroscience. Psychedelic substances offer a unique insight into the influences of specific neurotransmitter systems on perception, cognition and consciousness. Specifically, their impact on brain function propag...
Psychoactive substances obtained from botanicals have been applied for a wide variety of purposes in the rituals of different cultures for thousands of years. Classical psychedelics from N,N'-dimethyltryptamine, psilocybin, mescaline and various lysergamides cause specific alterations in perception, emotion and cognition by acting through serotonin 5-HT2A re...
Diverse symptomatology makes Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) difficult to treat, and currently there are no approved prevention or treatment methods for FXS. Current therapies, including pharmaceutical and behavioural interventions, offer a patchwork of solutions that have limited efficacy and high toxicity. The current study aims to examine psilocybin as a safe tr...
This article underscores the critical role of social workers in harnessing the potential therapeutic benefits of psilocybin for treating major depressive disorder (MDD) and substance use disorder (SUD). Contemporary treatments for MDD often have side effects, and the success rate for SUD treatments remains low. The pervasiveness of MDD, combined with the cha...
Entheogens, a class of psychoactive substances with profound cultural and religious significance, have been utilized for centuries across diverse traditions for healing, spiritual exploration, and communication with the divine. Their historical usage spans continents, from the pre-Columbian Americas to traditional African practices and Ayurvedic medicine in ...
BACKGROUND: Psilocybin offers new hope for treating mood disorders due to its rapid and sustained antidepressant effects, as standard medications require weeks or months to exert their effects. However, the mechanisms underlying this action of psilocybin have not been identified. AIMS: To investigate whether psilocybin has rapid and sustained antidepressant-...
Psilocybin has shown promise for alleviating symptoms of depression and is currently in clinical trials for the treatment of anorexia nervosa (AN), a condition that is characterised by persistent cognitive inflexibility. Considering that enhanced cognitive flexibility after psilocybin treatment is reported to occur in individuals with depression, it is plaus...
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 treadmill. The...
Serotonergic psychedelics have been identified as promising next-generation therapeutic agents in the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. While their efficacy has been increasingly validated, the mechanism by which they exert a therapeutic effect is still debated. A popular theoretical account is that excessive 5-HT2a agonism disrupts cortical dynamics,...
To the Editor According to the study protocol, the recently published study by Aaronson et al1 was carried out “to assess effectiveness of 25 mg of psilocybin in [15] patients with treatment-resistant type 2 bipolar depression.” We see 3 concerns.
BACKGROUND: There is growing evidence for the therapeutic effects of the psychedelic drug psilocybin for major depression. However, due to the lack of safety data on combining psilocybin with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) and concerns that there may be a negative interaction on effica...
We examined if the therapeutic alliance between study participants and intervention facilitators in a psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT) trial changed over time and whether there were relationships between alliance, acute psilocybin experiences, and depression outcomes. In a randomized, waiting list-controlled clinical trial for major depressive disorder in a...
A single 25-mg dose of psilocybin resulted in improvement in depressive symptoms in all 15 participants in an open-label nonrandomized trial enrolling adults with bipolar II disorder. Twelve of the 15 participants met response and remission criteria at the study's 12-week endpoint.
ObjectiveThis study aims to provide an overview of pharmacological trials that examine the neurocognitive effects of psychedelics among healthy individuals and patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depressive disorder (MDD).MethodsThe Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) was used as a guide to structure and report ...
This pilot study investigated psilocybin-induced changes in neural reactivity to alcohol and emotional cues in patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD). Participants were recruited from a phase II, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial investigating psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT) for the treatment of AUD (NCT02061293). Eleven adult p...
BACKGROUND: To investigate the association between pre-trial expectancy, suggestibility, and response to treatment in a trial of escitalopram and investigational drug, COMP360, psilocybin, in the treatment of major depressive disorder (ClinicalTrials.gov registration: NCT03429075). METHODS: = 55) from our recent double-blind, parallel-group, randomized head-...
