BACKGROUND: Motor functional neurological disorder (FND) is a common illness associated with significant functional impairment. There are no effective pharmacotherapies, and despite the early promise of physiotherapy studies, many suffer disabling symptoms in the long term. There is a theoretical rationale for combining psychedelics with physiotherapy; howev...
The past two decades have seen the reemergence of research investigating the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs across neuropsychiatric illnesses. One condition, alcohol use disorder (AUD), is of relevance given the broad public health implications and both limited effectiveness and attrition associated with currently available treatments. While emer...
Abstract High-grade gliomas are the most aggressive form of brain tumors, and neuronal activity has emerged as a driver of glioma pathophysiology. Activity-dependent glioma growth results from paracrine factor signaling and bona fide neuron-to-glioma synapses that integrate glioma cells into brain-wide neuronal circuits. Here, we report how glioma cells inte...
Serotonergic psychedelics are being explored as treatments for a range of psychiatric conditions. Promising results in mood disorders indicate that their effects on emotional processing may play a central role in their therapeutic potential. However, mechanistic and clinical studies paint a complex picture of the impact of psychedelics on emotions and mood. ...
After many years of stigma and neglect, there is a resurgence of interest in the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs. Anecdotal and evidence-based reports indicate psychedelics as a possible treatment for depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance abuse, and other disorders resistant to conventional medical interventions. The available data, however, are limited ...
This project will employ functional brain imaging to study the mechanism and immediate and long-term effects of psilocybin, a serotonin receptor 2A agonist, on cortical and cortico-subcortical brain networks in healthy adults. Psilocybin shows promise as a safe, transformational therapeutic across several psychiatric conditions. However, little is know about...
BackgroundOver the past ten years, several psychedelic compounds, including tryptamines like lysergic acid diethylamide/LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and dimethyltryptamine/DMT, have been tested in clinical trials for a range of psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety and depression. While these compounds are relatively available for treatment, ketamine and it...
The goal of this study is to learn how psychedelics may help symptoms of depression and anxiety. Participants with major depressive disorder experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety will receive one dose of either a drug related to psilocybin or a placebo. Assessments include interviews, self-report questionnaires, EEG and fMRI to measure symptoms and...
Investigators will recruit 36 individuals on MAT for OUD for a double-blind, placebo-controlled design to determine whether PEX010 (25-mg/d) shows preliminary efficacy on neural correlates of neurocognition and on clinical outcomes. Participants will be randomized to either (single dose) 25-mg (PEX010-25 group) or 1-mg (PPEX010-1 group) PEX010 in a 2:1 ratio...
Participants in this study will undergo a series of non-invasive tests and activities designed to understand how a single dose of psilocybin might influence cognition and emotional well-being in healthy older adults. After providing written informed consent, eligible participants, aged between 60 and 85, will be randomly assigned to receive a dose of psilocy...
The long-term objective of this project is to characterize how psilocybin affects visual perception and the brain's representation of the visual environment. It is known that psilocybin alters aspects of visual perception, but the underlying brain mechanisms contributing to these effects are poorly understood. The proposed work will address these questions i...
In a suburb of Vancouver, Canada, a nondescript three-story building sits alongside a strip of parking lots. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary commercial office space. But inside is something more extraordinary: rows of shelves stacked with plastic tubs full of magic mushrooms-mushrooms that contain the hallucinogenic chemical psilocybin. In a year...
Serotonergic psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin, and DMT, have strong effects on human brain activity, yet their mechanisms of action at the whole-brain level are only partially understood. Here, we present a biophysically-based mean-field model that integrates cellular and network-level details to simulate the effects of these compounds at different spat...
BackgroundResults from contemporary clinical trials of serotonergic psychedelic therapies have led to an increasing focus on their potential clinical use across mental disorders. However, studies examining mechanisms of clinical response to psychedelic therapy in psychiatric populations are limited. This review aimed to synthesize evidence from studies exami...
This phase I trial tests the safety and side effects of a second episode of psilocybin-assisted group therapy and how well it works in treating anxiety and distress in patients with cancer that has spread from where it first started (primary site) to other places in the body (metastatic) and had a partial response to their first retreat. Up to 50% of patient...
Human neuroimaging studies report that psychedelics induce serotonin-2A receptor-dependent changes in functional brain reorganization, presumably reflecting neuromodulation. However, these studies often overlook the potent vasoactive effects of serotonin. Here we identified psilocybin-induced alterations in hemodynamic response functions during human functio...
The primary aim is to determine the feasibility of enrolling and 15 women with chronic pelvic pain (CPP) that have failed one conventional for CPP to obtain preliminary safety data on a single administration of a moderate dose of pharmaceutical grade psilocybin (25 mg) in combination with psychotherapy sessions (two pre-dose preparatory and three post-dose i...
Abstract Psychedelics such as psilocybin have been linked to enhanced neuroplasticity and symptom relief in affective disorders, but the neurobiological mechanisms and impact of environmen-tal context remain unclear. Here, we tested whether a single dose of psilocybin alters synap-tic density in healthy individuals and whether setting-dependent subjective ex...
Psilocybin, a serotonin receptor agonist in the brain, significantly and quickly improves depressive symptoms while inducing profound acute subjective effects. The benefit-risk ratio of psilocybin in treatment-resistant depression seems favorable, but needs to be confirmed. Moreover, the role of 5-HT2A receptors, involved in the psychedelic experience, on th...
Psilocybin, an indoleamine alkaloid derived from various fungal species, is the subject of renewed, rigorous investigation for its therapeutic potential in psychiatry. This compound, a prodrug for the active metabolite psilocin, functions primarily as a partial agonist at the serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) receptor. Its administration within a structured psychotherap...
