Adolescents who completed a 12-week meditation training program showed decreases in gray matter volume in the left posterior insula, left thalamus, and left putamen, brain regions involved in physical and emotional awareness. No significant changes occurred during a control period before training. These findings differ from studies in adults, where meditation is typically associated with increased gray matter, suggesting the adolescent brain may respond differently to meditation.
Serotonergic psychedelics show therapeutic effects across diverse neuropsychiatric, inflammatory, and cardiometabolic disorders, effects mediated largely by the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor. These drugs are exceptionally context-dependent, able to be anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory depending on setting. Each target pathology is linked to elevated stress exposure, which drives mitochondrial and allostatic dysregulation. The authors propose that psychedelics act as super-normal stimuli for the adaptive 5-HT2A receptor stress response, inducing a process called allostatic recalibration (AR). AR involves three phases: destabilizing, recalibrating, and consolidating updated allostatic programs. This recalibration replaces entrenched pathological allostatic programs with ones tuned to the safe context of psychedelic therapy, explaining their transdiagnostic effects.