Classic psychedelic drugs, including psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide, and ayahuasca/N,N-dimethyltryptamine, are increasingly being studied as therapeutics for myriad health conditions; however, predicting individual responses is notoriously difficult. An arguably underappreciated variable potentially moderating responses to psychedelics is age. Older ...
Sleep paralysis (SP), an REM parasomnia, can be characterized as one of the symptoms of narcolepsy. The SP phenomenon involves regaining meta-consciousness by the dreamer during REM, when the physiological atonia of skeletal muscles is accompanied by visual and auditory hallucinations that are perceived as vivid and distressing nightmares. Sensory impression...
Background and Hypothesis Visual hallucinations (VH) are a core symptom of both Lewy body diseases (LBDs; e.g., Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies) and serotonergic psychedelics (SPs; e.g., psilocybin and mescaline). While these classes of VH differ in etiology, shared pathways are suggested by overlapping phenomenology and neural mechanisms. ...
Background: Individuals with bipolar II disorder (BD-II) and depression face limited treatment options and are often excluded from psilocybin therapy trials due to theoretical concerns of precipitating mania or psychosis. Although psilocybin has demonstrated antidepressant effects when combined with psychotherapy, adverse event reporting is inconsistent, and...
Serotonergic psychedelics alter self-boundaries and can induce out-of-body experiences (OBEs)-the sense of being located outside one’s physical body. While OBEs also occur in clinical conditions and can be experimentally induced, their neural basis under psychedelics remains underexplored. In an open-label, baseline-controlled MRI study of 62 healthy adults ...
A recent randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group trial (NCT02061293) found that psilocybin-assisted therapy significantly improved drinking outcomes compared to an active placebo in adults with alcohol use disorder (AUD). In this secondary analysis, we assessed whether psilocybin-assisted therapy improved self-compassion and whether thes...
Both psychedelic substances and meditation have been proposed to facilitate personally meaningful and transformative experiences, with insights playing a central role. However, previous research has mainly relied on questionnaires, limiting the range of insights that can be identified. In this study, we recruited participants who provided narrative reports o...
The goal of this clinical trial is to test the feasibility of combining meditation with psilocybin microdosing in healthy adults. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. Recruitment and retention feasibility 2. Acceptability, Safety and Tolerability 3. Exploratory Measures: 3.1: Explore potential changes in sleep quality and duration, heart rate variabi...
As psychedelic use increases, understanding how demographic and behavioral factors influence the effects of psychedelics is essential for both research and public health. This cross-sectional study examined 365 current psilocybin users, analyzing differences in acute experiences, psychological outcomes, and substance co-use patterns. Participants were catego...
Background: Despite significant advancements in the treatment of depression, challenges such as inadequate response rates and high placebo effects highlight the need for improved therapies and a deeper understanding of treatment expectations. Patient expectations play a crucial role in treatment outcomes but have not been systematically investigated in the c...
Psychedelics have re-emerged as promising treatments for mood disorders. The current model provides a moderate-to-high dose of a psychedelic agent (e.g., psilocybin) to reliably induce an altered state of consciousness. Unfortunately, the hallucinatory effects limit the treatment's potential scalability given patients' vulnerability and extensive monitoring ...
As we see an increase in the cost of and decrease in access to healthcare in the United States, many individuals are searching for ways to “self-medicate”. While scientific literature on the effectiveness of psilocybin as a treatment for mental and physical health concerns is limited, evidence of use for these purposes may show a need for further research. T...
This chapter reviews the effects of classic psychedelics on human oscillatory brain activity, as measured by resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). Across moderate to high doses of LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and DMT, a consistent reduction in alpha power (8-13 Hz) emerges, particularly in occipital regions. Below 30 Hz,...
N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a psychoactive substance with similar effects such as LSD or psilocybin. However, DMT is less well characterized than the latter substances. The present study is a modern randomized cross-over trial, investigating different intravenous DMT boluses over a broad dose range. Thus, different doses will be tested and related to sub...
Background and Hypothesis Visual hallucinations (VH) are a core symptom of both Lewy body diseases (LBDs; e.g., Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies) and serotonergic psychedelics (SPs; e.g., psilocybin and mescaline). While these classes of VH differ in etiology, shared pathways are suggested by overlapping phenomenology and neural mechanisms. ...
This retrospective case study features a woman in her mid-50s who spent her childhood in a religious community plagued by sexual abuse of children. She was abused by her father for more than a decade. The church and her mother ignored her reports about it. In her early twenties, she enrolled herself in the Erhard Seminars Training program that destabilized h...
Psilocybin produces an altered state of consciousness in humans and is associated with complex spatiotemporal changes in cortical networks. Given the emphasis on rodent models for mechanistic studies, there is a need for characterization of the effect of psilocybin on cortex-wide network dynamics. Previous electroencephalographic studies of psychedelics in r...
Rationale Since the earliest LSD research, psychedelics have been claimed to enhance autobiographical memory. Revisiting and processing autobiographical memories has further been suggested to be a major component of the therapeutic action of psychedelics. However, modern psychedelic research has largely neglected autobiographical elements of psychedelic expe...
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is typically characterized by altered linear functional connectivity (FC) across large-scale brain networks. Yet, it is unclear whether similar alterations are observed when nonlinear FC is examined. This study investigated how antidepressant treatment (i.e., psilocybin and escitalopram) modulates both linear FC and nonlinear ...
New methods that capture the public's perception of controversial topics may be valuable. This study investigates public sentiments towards psychedelics and other substances through analyzes of Reddit discussions, using Google’s cloud-based Natural Language Processing (NLP) infrastructure. Our findings indicate that illicit substances such as heroin and meth...
