Annual Review of Neuroscience
July 1, 2026
Gül Dölen, Makenzie L Wilkinson
Psychedelics are a broad category of compounds that induce altered states of consciousness. These drugs have shown remarkable promise for the treatment of debilitating disorders ranging from posttraumatic stress disorder to depression and addiction. Although early studies focused on linking binding targets of psychedelics to their therapeutic effects, these pharmacological and biochemical...
Nature
June 14, 2023
Romain Nardou, Young Jun Song, Noelle Wright et al.
335 citations
Abstract Psychedelics are a broad class of drugs defined by their ability to induce an altered state of consciousness 1,2 . These drugs have been used for millennia in both spiritual and medicinal contexts, and a number of recent clinical successes have spurred a renewed interest in developing psychedelic therapies 3–9 . Nevertheless, a unifying mechanism that can account for these shared...
Nature
April 3, 2019
Romain Nardou, Eastman M. Lewis, Rebecca Rothhaas et al.
343 citations
A critical period is a developmental epoch during which the nervous system is expressly sensitive to specific environmental stimuli that are required for proper circuit organization and learning. Mechanistic characterization of critical periods has revealed an important role for exuberant brain plasticity during early development, and for constraints that are imposed on these mechanisms as the...
Current Biology
October 8, 2018
Eric Edsinger, Gül Dölen
Human and octopus lineages are separated by over 500 million years of evolution [1, 2] and show divergent anatomical patterns of brain organization [3, 4]. Despite these differences, growing evidence suggests that ancient neurotransmitter systems are shared across vertebrate and invertebrate species and in many cases enable overlapping functions [5]. Sociality is widespread across the animal...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 16, 2018
Eric Edsinger, Gül Dölen
1 citation
preprint
Human and octopus lineages are separated by over 500 million years of evolution, and show divergent anatomical patterns of brain organization. Moreover, while humans exhibit highly complex social behaviors, octopuses are thought to be largely asocial and solitary. Despite these differences, growing evidence suggests that ancient neurotransmitter systems are shared across vertebrate and...