Background: Therapeutic administration of psychedelic drugs has shown significant potential in historical accounts and in recent clinical trials in the treatment of depression and other mood disorders. A recent randomized double-blind phase-IIb study demonstrated the safety and efficacy of COMP360, COMPASS Pathways’ proprietary synthetic formulation of psilo...
Background: Therapeutic administration of psychedelic drugs has shown significant potential in historical accounts and in recent clinical trials in the treatment of depression and other mood disorders. A recent randomized double-blind phase-IIb study demonstrated the safety and efficacy of COMP360, COMPASS Pathways’ proprietary synthetic formulation of psilo...
Medical hallucinogens have been important compounds of research interest in recent years. Computational chemistry methods like Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations at BP86/Def2-TZVP level are carried out to get more insight into the structural preferences and mechanism of hallucinogens like psilocybin and mescaline derivatives at the molecular level....
BackgroundMajor depressive disorder is often associated with maladaptive coping strategies, including rumination and thought suppression.AimsTo assess the comparative effect of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor escitalopram, and the serotonergic psychedelic psilocybin (COMP360), on rumination and thought suppression in major depressive disorder.Meth...
Both psychedelic drug experiences and near-death experiences can occasion changes in perspectives on death and dying, but there have been few direct comparisons of these phenomena. This study directly compared psychedelic occasioned and non-drug experiences which altered individuals' beliefs about death. Individuals who reported an experience that altered th...
Abstract Psilocybin is a psychedelic substance approaching clinical use. The drug has long-lasting effects after single or multiple administrations and enhances structural plasticity in the brain. Little is known if the plasticity inducing effects of psilocybin could be timed to other treatments and promote a larger effect. We investigated the effect of psil...
Stropharia rugosoannulata is not only a popular edible mushroom, but also has excellent potential in bioremediation. In this study, we present a high-quality genome of a monokaryotic strain of the S. rugosoannulata commercial cultivar in China. The assembly yielded an N50 length of 2.96 Mb and a total size of approximately 48.33 Mb, encoding 11,750 proteins....
“Are magic mushrooms the miracle cure for depression we've been looking for?” (Khan, 2021). Attention-grabbing headlines such as this are becoming increasingly common and suggest that psychedelic medicines are some kind of magic bullet. This perception is increased by stories of people who had a single life-changing psychedelic experience that resulted in co...
Standards are useful in the development of medicine because they enable communication and consistency in experimentation. Standards, however, often require expensive tools like laboratories and clinical trials. How, then, might citizen scientists develop standards given the difficulty of obtaining these tools? This article provides one answer, by describing ...
Veterans are at increased risk of experiencing symptoms of trauma. Although many benefit from available treatments, some find treatment inaccessible or ineffective and explore alternative substances. One such substance is psilocybin. This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis study aimed to provide an initial insight into the experiences of veterans who h...
Substance use disorders (SUD) represent a significant public health issue with a high need for novel and efficacious treatment options. In light of this high unmet need, recent results reporting beneficial outcomes of psychedelic-assisted therapy in SUD are particularly relevant. However, several questions remain with regard to this treatment approach. The c...
Preliminary evidence suggests that classic psychedelics may be effective in the treatment of some psychiatric disorders, yet little remains known about their effects on health behavior and physical health. The purpose of this study was to investigate associations of lifetime classic psychedelic use and psychological insight during one's most insightful class...
There has recently been a renewal of interest in psychedelic research on the use of psilocybin in psychiatric treatment and, in particular, for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). Several state-of-the-art studies have provided new insight into the mechanisms of action of psilocybin and its therapeutic potential. Nevertheless, many questions rem...
In this précis I summarise the main ideas of my book Philosophy of Psychedelics. The book discusses philosophical issues arising from the therapeutic use of classic psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD. The book is organised around what I call the Comforting Delusion Objection to psychedelic therapy: the concern that this novel and promising treatmen...
In this précis I summarise the main ideas of my book Philosophy of Psychedelics. The book discusses philosophical issues arising from the therapeutic use of classic psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD. The book is organised around what I call the Comforting Delusion Objection to psychedelic therapy: the concern that this novel and promising treatmen...
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....
Altered waking states of consciousness and its underlying functional organization have gained increasing interest in recent years, i.e. in identifying the neural basis of consciousness. To overcome fundamental shortcomings of current methods to objectively assess the level of consciousness, the investigators propose here to apply a novel and empirically vali...
Abstract This article reports on the experiences of four healthy individuals who attended a legal psilocybin truffle retreat in the Netherlands. The study employed a qualitative phenomenological approach, using semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding of participants' psilocybin experiences and their after-effects. The experiential themes that eme...
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....
BackgroundSeveral measures have been developed to examine acute psychedelic effects (e.g. mystical-type and challenging experiences), but no measure assesses acute psychologically insightful experiences that may occur during psychedelic experiences.AimThe purpose of this study was to develop and examine the psychometric properties of the Psychological Insigh...
