April 23, 2026
Eli Stark-Elster, Mamosebetsi Sethathi, Breyten Van der Merwe et al.
Reliable documentation of the traditional use of serotonergic psychedelics has long been confined to the Americas. Prevailing narratives often overstate the global prevalence and uniformity of traditional psychedelic use, extrapolating from a limited set of well-documented cases. Here, we report evidence of psilocybin mushroom use among Basotho traditional healers and non-healers in Lesotho and...
The Behavioral and brain sciences
July 1, 2025
Manvir Singh
1 citation
Human societies reliably develop complex cultural traditions with striking similarities. These "super-attractors" span the domains of magic and religion (e.g., shamanism, supernatural punishment beliefs), aesthetics (e.g., heroic tales, dance songs), and social institutions (e.g., justice, corporate groups), and collectively constitute what I call the "cultural manifold." The cultural manifold...
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
September 7, 2023
Marianna Graziosi, Manvir Singh, Sandeep M. Nayak et al.
10 citations
ABSTRACT Reports of psychedelic experiences may contain similarities and differences across cultural contexts, but most current characterizations and quantifications of psychedelic experiences come from Western medical and naturalistic settings. In this article, we begin with a brief history of the diversity of psychedelic use in non-Western settings. We then compare and contrast accounts of...
Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England)
2023
Sandeep M. Nayak, Manvir Singh, David B. Yaden et al.
87 citations
Psychedelic use is anecdotally associated with belief changes, although few studies have tested these claims. Characterize a broad range of psychedelic occasioned belief changes. A survey was conducted in 2374 respondents who endorsed having had a belief changing psychedelic experience. Participants rated their agreement with belief statements Before and After the psychedelic experience as well...
Manvir Singh
35 citations
Shamans, including medicine-men, mediums, and the prophets of religious movements, recur across human societies. Shamanism also existed among nearly all documented hunter-gatherers, likely characterized the religious lives of many ancestral humans, and is often proposed by anthropologists to be the “first profession”, representing the first institutionalized division of labor beyond age and...