Aims Depression is the single largest contributor to global disability. However, effective treatments are currently lacking, resulting in a significant burden of treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Psilocybin, a serotonergic psychedelic, found as the active compound in 'magic mushrooms', has been proposed as a novel therapeutic avenue for TRD. We aimed to ...
Clinical research into serotonergic psychedelic drugs including psilocybin, LSD and N,N-DMT (e.g., in ‘ayahuasca’) is expanding rapidly and clinical trials across a range of psychiatric conditions have shown promising efficacy, with larger trials ongoing. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has emerged as a brain imaging strategy commo...
Clinical research into serotonergic psychedelic drugs including psilocybin, LSD and N,N-DMT (e.g., in ‘ayahuasca’) is expanding rapidly and clinical trials across a range of psychiatric conditions have shown promising efficacy, with larger trials ongoing. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has emerged as a brain imaging strategy commo...
Aims Depression is the single largest contributor to global disability. However, effective treatments are currently lacking, resulting in a significant burden of treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Psilocybin, a serotonergic psychedelic, found as the active compound in 'magic mushrooms', has been proposed as a novel therapeutic avenue for TRD. We aimed to ...
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...
LSD and psilocybin are serotonergic psychedelic compounds with potential in the treatment of mental health disorders. Past neuroimaging investigations have revealed that both compounds can elicit significant changes to whole-brain functional organization and dynamics. A recent proposal linked past findings into a unified model and hypothesized reduced whole-...
Parkinson's disease is often characterised by movement symptoms such as rigidity and bradykinesia, however, there are a number of non-motor symptoms that can have a significant impact on quality of life. One of the most common non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease is visual hallucinations (where someone sees things that don't exist outside their mind).. ...
Neuroimaging studies of the psychedelic state offer a unique window onto the neural basis of conscious perception and selfhood. Despite well understood pharmacological mechanisms of action, the large-scale changes in neural dynamics induced by psychedelic compounds remain poorly understood. Using source-localised, steady-state MEG recordings, we describe cha...
The serotonergic hallucinogen psilocybin has characteristic effects on human brain activity and subjective experience. Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies showed alternations of functional connectivity (FC) under the influence of psilocybin in humans. No study, as yet, investigated psilocybin-induced changes in brain hemodynamics an...
The effects of hallucinogenic drugs on the human brain have been studied since the earliest days of neuroimaging in the 1990s. However, approaches are often hard to compare and results are heterogeneous. In this chapter, we summarize studies investigating the effects of hallucinogens on the resting brain, with a special emphasis on replicability and limitati...
Our creativity is challenged daily when facing new situations asking for novel solutions. Creativity, a multicomponent construct includes flexible divergent and rigid convergent thinking. Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin can enhance creativity and affect state of mind (mood, empathy, openness). Of note, flexible thinking is disturbed in psychopathological c...
Recent, well-controlled - albeit small-scale - clinical trials show that serotonergic psychedelics, including psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide, possess great promise for treating psychiatric disorders, including treatment-resistant depression. Additionally, fresh results from a deluge of clinical neuroimaging studies are unveiling the dynamic effect...
The psychological state elicited by the classic psychedelics drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin, is one of the most fascinating and yet least understood states of consciousness. However, with the advent of modern functional neuroimaging techniques, the effect of these drugs on neural activity is now being revealed, although many of the varied phenomenological...
Networks, as efficient representations of complex systems, have appealed to scientists for a long time and now permeate many areas of science, including neuroimaging (Bullmore and Sporns 2009 Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 10, 186-198. (doi:10.1038/nrn2618)). Traditionally, the structure of complex networks has been studied through their statistical properties and metr...
The study of rapid changes in brain dynamics and functional connectivity (FC) is of increasing interest in neuroimaging. Brain states departing from normal waking consciousness are expected to be accompanied by alterations in the aforementioned dynamics. In particular, the psychedelic experience produced by psilocybin (a substance found in "magic mushrooms")...
Entropy is a dimensionless quantity that is used for measuring uncertainty about the state of a system but it can also imply physical qualities, where high entropy is synonymous with high disorder. Entropy is applied here in the context of states of consciousness and their associated neurodynamics, with a particular focus on the psychedelic state. The psyche...
The psychedelic experience has been reported since antiquity, but there is relatively little known about the underlying neural mechanisms. A recent neuroimaging study on psilocybin revealed a pattern of decreased cerebral blood flow and functional disconnections that is surprisingly similar to that caused by various anesthetics. In this article, the authors ...
Recent developments in the study of classic hallucinogens, combined with a re-appraisal of the older literature, have led to a renewal of interest in possible therapeutic applications for these drugs, notably their application in the treatment of addictions. This article will first provide a brief review of the research literature providing direct and indire...
Increasing evidence from neuroimaging and behavioral studies suggests that functional disturbances within cortico-striato-thalamic pathways are critical to psychotic symptom formation in drug-induced and possibly also naturally occurring psychoses. Recent basic and clinical research with psychotomimetic drugs, such as the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamat...
