This study seeks to understand the neural, cognitive and behavioral effects of low doses of psilocybin administered in the form of dried mushroom material (0.5 g of Psilocybe cubensis) consumed in natural settings following a placebo-controlled double-blind experimental design. Sub-threshold doses of serotonergic psychedelics are frequently consumed as cogni...
Basic pain research has shed light on key cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying nociceptive and phenomenological aspects of pain. Despite these advances, we still yearn for the discovery of novel therapeutic strategies to address the unmet needs of about 70 % of chronic neuropathic pain patients whose pain fails to respond to opioids as well as to oth...
Psychedelic substances produce unusual and compelling changes in conscious experience that have prompted some to propose that psychedelics may provide unique insights explaining the nature of consciousness. At present, psychedelics, like other current scientific tools and methods, seem unlikely to provide information relevant to the so-called "hard problem o...
The emerging novel therapeutic psilocybin produces psychedelic effects via engagement of cerebral serotonergic targets by psilocin (active metabolite). The serotonin 2A receptor critically mediates these effects by altering distributed neural processes that manifest as increased entropy, reduced functional connectivity (FC) within discrete brain networks (i....
BackgroundPsilocybin is a psychedelic drug that has shown lasting positive effects on clinical symptoms and self-reported well-being following a single dose. There has been little research into the long-term effects of psilocybin on brain connectivity in humans.AimEvaluate changes in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) at 1 week and 3 months after o...
Psychedelics like lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin offer a powerful window into the function of the human brain and mind, by temporarily altering subjective experience through their neurochemical effects. A recent model postulates that serotonin 2a (5-HT2a) receptor agonism allows the brain to explore its dynamic landscape more readily, as ref...
The emerging novel therapeutic psilocybin produces psychedelic effects via engagement of cerebral serotonergic targets by psilocin (active metabolite). The serotonin 2A receptor critically mediates these effects by altering distributed neural processes that manifest as increased entropy, reduced functional connectivity (FC) within discrete brain networks (i....
ABSTRACT Background Psilocybin is a psychedelic drug that has shown lasting positive effects on clinical symptoms and self-reported well-being following a single dose. There has been little research into the long-term effects of psilocybin on brain connectivity in humans. Aims Evaluate changes in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) at one-week and t...
Anderson et al.’s [[1]Anderson B.T. Danforth A. Daroff R. Stauffer C. Ekman E. Agin-Liebes G. et al.Psilocybin-facilitated group therapy for demoralized older long-term AIDS survivor men: an open-label safety and feasibility pilot study.Eclinical Med. 2020; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100538Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (74) Google Scholar...
Abstract The recent revivification of interest in the therapeutic use of psychedelics has had a particular focus on mood disorders and addiction, although there is reason to think these drugs may be effective more widely. After outlining pertinent aspects of psilocybin and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the current review summarizes the evidence indica...
Psychedelic drugs, including the serotonin 2a (5-HT2A) receptor partial agonist psilocybin, are receiving renewed attention for their possible efficacy in treating a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders. Psilocybin induces widespread dysregulation of cortical activity, but circuit-level mechanisms underlying this effect are unclear. The claustrum is a subco...
Psilocybin is a classic psychedelic compound that may have efficacy for the treatment of mood and substance use disorders. Acute psilocybin effects include reduced negative mood, increased positive mood, and reduced amygdala response to negative affective stimuli. However, no study has investigated the long-term, enduring impact of psilocybin on negative aff...
Anorexia nervosa (AN) has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disease, yet available pharmacological treatments are largely ineffective due, in part, to an inadequate understanding of the neurobiological drivers that underpin the condition. The recent resurgence of research into the clinical applications of psychedelic medicine for a range of menta...
This is a double-blind placebo-controlled study investigating the acute and persisting effects of psilocybin on meditation, spirituality, health, well-being, prosocial attitudes, and brain functioning. This study will use questionnaires and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the acute and persisting effects of psilocybin on brain functio...
This paper formulates the action of psychedelics by integrating the free-energy principle and entropic brain hypothesis. We call this formulation relaxed beliefs under psychedelics (REBUS) and the anarchic brain, founded on the principle that-via their entropic effect on spontaneous cortical activity-psychedelics work to relax the precision of high-level pri...
Psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin and LSD, represent unique tools for researchers in-vestigating the neural origins of consciousness. Currently, the most compelling theories of how psychedelics exert their effects is by increasing the complexity of brain activity and moving the system towards a critical point between order and disorder, creating more dyn...
The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative review and offer novel insights regarding human research with classic psychedelics (classic hallucinogens), which are serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2AR) agonists such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline, and psilocybin. Classic psychedelics have been administered as sacraments since ancient times...
The search for the universal laws of human brain function is still on-going but progress is being made. Here we describe the novel concepts of connectome harmonics and connectome-harmonic decomposition, which can be used to characterize the brain activity associated with any mental state. We use this new frequency-specific language to describe the brain acti...
How do psychedelic drugs produce their characteristic range of acute effects in perception, emotion, cognition, and sense of self? How do these effects relate to the clinical efficacy of psychedelic-assisted therapies? Efforts to understand psychedelic phenomena date back more than a century in Western science. In this article I review theories of psychedeli...
