Depression is highly prevalent and represents the leading cause of global disability and primary contributor to overall global burden of disease. Several lines of evidence from early-phase experimental trials suggest that serotonergic psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, with therapeutic support show great promise in the treatment of depression with large ...
Introduction: Microdosing refers to the repetitive administration of tiny doses of psychedelics (LSD, Psilocybin) over an extended period of time. This practice has been linked to alleged cognitive benefits, such as improved mood and creativity, potentiated by targeting serotonergic 5-HT2A receptors and facilitating cognitive flexibility. Nonetheless, in the...
Objective: Recent clinical trials have demonstrated that psilocybin may have strong antidepressant effects, and may be effective in the treatment of depressive disorders when embedded in a psychotherapeutic protocol (psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy; PAP). However, despite promising results, the mechanism(s) that may be responsible for the antidepressant ef...
After decades of stagnancy, research on psychedelic substances (such as LSD, psilocybin or DMT) has experienced a renaissance over the last 10 years, with various major research programs being conducted across Europe and the United States. This research primarily investigates the potential of psychedelics in the treatment of mental health disorders, their sh...
## Aim Investigate accounts from breath-holding freedivers about high efficiency in coping with adversity and pain, immediately quitting addictions, attaining harmonious meaningful life, becoming perspicacious and compassionate, getting spontaneous religious experience. ## Findings Full Mystical Experience is confirmed to happen in freediving, i.e. it is the...
Introduction Psilocybin (PSI) has persistent antidepressant efficacy in human trials. We have shown one dose of PSI to significantly decrease depressive-like behavior in male Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats for at least five weeks without losing efficacy. However, the outcome assay we used to evaluate depressive-like behavior, the forced swim test (FST), has been cr...
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 West African iboga plant has been used for centuries by the Bwiti and Mbiri tribes to induce hallucinations during religious ceremonies. Ibogaine, the principal alkaloid responsible for iboga's psychedelic properties, was isolated and sold as an antidepressant in France for decades before its adverse effects precipitated its removal from the market. An i...
It has often been suggested in the popular and academic literature that the psychedelic state qualifies as a higher state of consciousness relative to the state of normal waking awareness. This article subjects this proposal to critical scrutiny, focusing on the question of what it would mean for a state of consciousness to be 'higher'. We begin by consideri...
In recent years, the scientific study of meditation and psychedelic drugs has seen remarkable developments. The increased focus on meditation in cognitive neuroscience has led to a cross-cultural classification of standard meditation styles validated by functional and structural neuroanatomical data. Meanwhile, the renaissance of psychedelic research has she...
In the past decade, an increasing number of clinical trials are reporting evidence that psychedelics or serotonergic hallucinogens (such as lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, and ayahuasca/dimethyltryptamine) could be effective in the treatment of mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders. The mechanisms responsible for these effects are not fully unde...
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...
Perturbing a system and observing the consequences is a classic scientific strategy for understanding a phenomenon. Psychedelic drugs perturb consciousness in a marked and novel way and thus are powerful tools for studying its mechanisms. In the present analysis, we measured changes in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between a standard template ...
The involvement of the serotonin system in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia has been elucidated by experiments with hallucinogens. Application of a hallucinogen to humans leads to changes in perception, cognition, emotions, and induction of psychotic-like symptoms that resemble symptoms of schizophrenia. In rodent studies, their acute administration affe...
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...