Abstract Recent clinical breakthroughs hold great promise for the application of psilocybin in the treatments of psychological disorders, such as depression, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psilocybin is a psychedelic whose metabolite, psilocin, is a 5-HT2A receptor agonist. Nevertheless, the underlying mechanisms for the effects of psilocybin ...
Psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) have remerged as agents of psychiatric and cultural relevance. However, public discourse has outpaced empirical understanding of their effects. Although hallucinogens have demonstrated a potential to treat certain mental disorders, their effect on aggression and violen...
Major depressive disorder (MDD), including treatment-resistant depression (TRD), is a highly prevalent psychiatric disorder. MDD is associated with severe suffering, burden and large economical costs. Although various conventional antidepressant treatments are available, a large portion of depressed people does not or not adequately respond to the first-line...
BACKGROUND: Psychedelics such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and psilocybin are showing promising results in clinical trials for the treatment of mental health disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and treatment-resistant depression. US Food and Drug Administration approval may be on the horizon. Yet, little is known ab...
OBJECTIVE: Psychedelics such as psilocybin are known for their hallucinogenic properties and have also been reported to produce long-lasting therapeutic effects in depression and possibly also other psychiatric disorders. Several lines of evidence suggest that psilocybin exerts its effects through activation of 5-HT2A receptors located postsynaptically to se...
Background: Although psychedelics have regained attention as potential treatment tools for various mental disorders, little research has examined their impact on temporal perception. Aims: This double-blinded placebo-controlled study aimed to investigate changes in temporal perception under psilocybin, both through performance during the Temporal Bisection T...
Background: Existing tools assess psychedelic experiences, but none specifically measure altered processing of traumatic memories-a key mechanism in trauma-focused therapies and psychotherapy in general. The helioscope effect describes how psychedelics like psilocybin and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) enable revisiting challenging or traumatic exp...
ABSTRACT Psilocybin, an indole alkaloid of psychedelic mushrooms, has the potential to sustainably improve the treatment of several psychiatric diseases. So far, the psilocybin demand for clinical trials has been met by chemical synthesis. In this study, we pursued the biotechnological approach to develop a psilocybin production process utilizing an overprod...
Background: Psilocybin has shown promise in neuropsychiatric disorders but presents a paradoxical relationship with seizures and epilepsy. Methods: A narrative review was conducted up to November 23, 2025. We conducted structured literature searches across PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science. and Google Scholar using MeSH terms and keywords to identify st...
Background: Psychedelic-assisted therapy is gaining renewed attention as a potential treatment for various mental disorders. Despite increasing numbers of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and meta-analyses, a comprehensive synthesis of the evidence across different substances and indications is lacking. This umbrella review aims to evaluate the effectiven...
Psychedelic use has greatly increased within clinical and recreational settings over recent years. While demonstrating a favorable safety profile within certain clinical populations, little empirical research has explored safety of psychedelic use within real-world samples. Using the World Health Organization (WHO) VigiBase, a comprehensive global pharmacovi...
OBJECTIVE: The goals of this study were to examine the therapeutic effects and safety of psilocybin given as a pulsed regimen for the prevention of migraine and to consider the blinding integrity of an active control agent. BACKGROUND: The administration of a single low dose of psilocybin was observed to have lasting therapeutic effects in one small pilot tr...
Background: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has shown promising results for treating alcohol use disorder (AUD) and other mental health conditions. Although the precise mechanisms of psychedelic therapies remain unclear, many studies report increased feelings of connectedness following psychedelic experiences. Specifically, both nature relatedness (one’s ...
Psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA have shown promise in treating mental health conditions (e.g., depression, post-traumatic stress disorder) among neurotypical individuals, i.e., typically developing individuals without a diagnosed neurodevelopmental condition. However, their therapeutic potential for treating co-occurring mental-health conditio...
Psilocybin, the psychoactive compound responsible for the hallucinogenic effects of “magic mushrooms,” is synthesized by a biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) traditionally associated with Psilocybe species. However, psilocybin production has also been identified in multiple genera across the Strophariaceae, Hymenogastraceae, and Galeropsidaceae families. Here, ...
Background: Psilocybin therapy is an emerging treatment for cancer-related anxiety, depression, and existential distress. Most clinical trials to date have studied individual models of psilocybin therapy, but group models may offer increased access and benefits of community. Purpose: This technical report describes a group facilitation model developed for an...
Classic psychedelics and related substances, such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), have again become a focus of interest in psychiatry as potential therapeutic tools. The aim of this paper is to review current data on their mechanisms of action, clinical applications in the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders, addictions and post-traumatic st...
For more than four decades, the emphasis in the academic study of world religions has been on differences over similarities, and comparative analyses allowing for commonalities have become increasingly rare. This article argues that similarities nonetheless exist and should be studied. After disclaiming the judgment of other scholars that Aldous Huxley attem...
In the absence of specific studies on the Psilocybe genus in Italy, we provide information on the taxonomy, habitat, ecology, and distribution of the nine taxa currently recorded for Italy. A nomenclatural update of Psilocybe taxa reported in the Checklist of Italian Fungi (Basidiomycetes), published in 2005, is provided and seven scientific binomials are co...
