Ayahuasca users often report receiving “messages” or a silent “voice” experienced as coming from an external instance that is neither the self nor other humans present. Building on Diament, Gomes, and Tófoli’s notion of a “plant third party,” we rename this phenomenon the plant third to foreground the field in which alterity is encountered. We first read the plant third through Lacanian...
This essay examines the combination of psychoanalytic therapy and psychedelic substances in mid-20th century Argentina. Through document analysis, it examines the intersection of psychedelics and psychoanalysis, drawing from historical texts and writings by local psychoanalysts to develop a comprehensive understanding of the distinctive clinical practices and therapeutic approaches in the...
Language has been explored as a window into the mind. Psychedelics, known to affect perception and cognition, seem to change language, but a systematic, time-dependent exploration is lacking. Therefore, we aimed at mapping the psychedelic effects on language over the time course of the acute and sub-acute effects in an explorative manner. For this, 24 healthy volunteers (age [mean±SD, range]:...
The therapeutic use of classical psychedelic substances such as d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) surged in recent years. Studies in rodents suggest that these effects are produced by increased neural plasticity, including stimulation of the mTOR pathway, a key regulator of metabolism, plasticity, and aging. Could psychedelic-induced neural plasticity be harnessed to enhance cognition? Here we...
Psychedelics acutely impair cognitive functions, but these impairments decline with growing experiences with psychedelics and microdoses may even exert opposing effects. Given the recent evidence that psychedelics induce neuroplasticity, this explorative study aimed at investigating the potential of psychedelics to sub-acutely change cognition. For this, we applied a randomized, double-blind,...