Since physician-assisted dying (PAD) has become a part of the clinical dialogue in the United States (US) and other Western countries, it has spawned controversy in the moral, ethical, and legal realm, with significant cross-country variation. The phenomenon of PAD includes 2 practices: Euthanasia and medical aid in dying (MAiD). Although euthanasia has been...
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating psychiatric condition that develops following exposure to a traumatic event. Individuals with this condition experience numerous physiological and behavioral alterations, including intrusive memories, avoidance of trauma-related stimuli, heightened anxiety, hypervigilance, impaired cognition, elevated r...
RATIONALE: Our study aimed to unravel the unknown mechanisms behind the exceptional efficacy of Psilocybin (PSI) in treating treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Focusing on Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats with a TRD phenotype and Wistar (WIS) rats as a normative comparison, we investigated behavioral and neuroplasticity-related responses to PSI, striving to shed l...
BackgroundAs the field of psychedelic therapy grows, it is vital to consider who can safely engage with psilocybin therapy. In most modern clinical trials of psilocybin therapy, individuals with a family history of bipolar disorder (BD) have been excluded from participation because of their genetic predisposition for developing BD.ReviewCase studies and surv...
Psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA are psychoactive compounds that exert behavioral effects with distinguishable but also overlapping features. The growing interest in using these compounds as therapeutics necessitates preclinical assays that can accurately screen psychedelics and related analogs. We posit that a promising approach may be to measure drug action ...
Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) is distinct from yet related to non-pathologic grief, depression, addiction, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with a prevalence of up to 10% in bereaved populations. Hallmarks of PGD include functional impairment a year or more post-bereavement and intense yearning for the deceased. Current treatments for PGD are typic...
Psychedelics like LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) and psilocybin are known to modulate perceptual modalities due to the activation of mostly serotonin receptors in specific cortical (e.g., visual cortex) and subcortical (e.g., thalamus) regions of the brain. In the visual domain, these psychedelic modulations often result in peculiar disturbances of viewed ...
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 on the br...
“Pretty girls don't buy cocaine,” Greta1 says and laughs as she walks out the front door.My hands and face sting as I stand frozen in the entryway and hear her start the car. I'd asked my twenty-two-year-old daughter where she got the money to feed the addictions she was battling.Over the past three years, she'd chosen a few subpar boyfriends who introduced ...
Depression is a debilitating mental health condition affecting millions worldwide. While antidepressant medications are widely prescribed, they often come with significant side effects and limited efficacy. Tessa Watford, a researcher in the field of neuroscience, has conducted a systematic review exploring the therapeutic potential of psilocybin, a naturall...
Mental illness is a hot topic of concern worldwide. The psilocybin has great potential in the treatment of mental disorders, but there is still a research gap on whether it can truly be applied in the treatment of mental disorders. Therefore, this research explores the feasibility of psilocybin’s true application in the treatment of mental disorders by colle...
BackgroundSince 2006 chocolate containing psilocin is circulating in The Netherlands. Psilocin is a psychoactive substance derived from psychedelic mushrooms and known to be hard drugs. Consuming psilocin can cause symptoms such as hallucinations, fear and panic attacks and sympathomimetic effects. These effects can last for approximately 6 hours.Case descri...
Serotonergic hallucinogens also referred to as psychedelics, are psychoactive substances that profoundly alter perception, mood, and cognitive processes. These substances, historically intertwined with religious and cultural rituals, offer profound effects that extend beyond mere hallucinations to profoundly altered states of consciousness. Notable compounds...
Research into the use of psilocybin for the treatment of psychiatric disorders is a growing field. Nevertheless, robust brain-behavior relationships linking psilocybin-induced brain changes to subjective drug-induced effects have not been established. Furthermore, it is unclear if the acute neural effects are dependent on individual heterogeneity in baseline...
GABAB receptors are the metabotropic GABA neurotransmitter receptors in the central nervous system constituting a fundamental part of the inhibitory modulation mechanism.These receptors are heterodimers composed of GABAB1 and GABAB2 which function is modulated by the potassium channel tetramerization domain proteins (KCTD) from clade F (KCTD16; KCTD12 and KC...
Psilocin is the active metabolite of psilocybin a natural material found in several types of fungi. The bioavailability of psilocybin, the prodrug of psilocin, has been reported to be over 60%. However, pharmacokinetics and bioavailability of psilocin mucate has not been reported. This Phase I "First in Man" study of psilocin mucate is designed to determine ...
ABSTRACT Intracellular calcium (Ca 2+ ) is ubiquitous to cell signaling across all biology. While existing fluorescent sensors and reporters can detect activated cells with elevated Ca 2+ levels, these approaches require implants to deliver light to deep tissue, precluding their noninvasive use in freely-behaving animals. Here we engineered an enzyme-catalyz...
Psilocybin, a psychoactive alkaloid with hallucinogenic properties, exists in a variety of hallucinogenic mushrooms. As a study tool to imitate psychosis, psilocybin has aroused a lot of interest in the biological community due to its various possible therapeutic benefits. It is also a very popular and widely misused natural hallucinogens with distinct metab...
BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that serotonergic psychedelics (e.g. psilocybin), have rapid-acting and long-lasting antidepressant effects after a single dose. However, the mechanism underlying these effects remain unclear. One proposed mechanism is that these drugs promote neuroplasticity. However, this has not been conclusively demonstrated in humans. AIMS:...
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a chronic relapsing psychiatric disorder. Conventional antidepressants usually require several weeks of continuous administration to exert clinically significant therapeutic effects, while about two-thirds of the patients are prone to relapse of symptoms or are completely ineffective in antidepressant treatment. The recent ...
