Scientific Reports
March 13, 2026
Daniel Soares Brandão, Rafael N. B. Scott, Ernesto Soares et al.
Every studied animal species exhibits some form of sleep, a state evolved under the sustained influence of prey and predator behaviors. Dreams have been proposed to have evolved as offline mental simulations able to warn against impending threats from the environment, such as predators. To assess how the ecological roles of prey and predator interact with sleep and dreaming, we used a...
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
May 14, 2025
Çağatay Demirel, Jarrod Gott, Kristoffer Appel et al.
8 citations
Lucid dreaming (LD) is a state of conscious awareness of the ongoing oneiric state, predominantly linked to REM sleep. Progress in understanding its neurobiological basis has been hindered by small sample sizes, diverse EEG setups, and artifacts like saccadic eye movements. To address these challenges in characterizing the electrophysiological correlates of LD, we introduced an adaptive...
Ponto Urbe
December 27, 2024
Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Anna O. Ermakova, Jordan Sloshower et al.
Em fevereiro de 2023, a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) divulgou um documento para a equipe jurídica que representa a Church of the Eagle and the Condor (“CEC”). Essa divulgação ocorreu dois anos depois que a igreja, em conjunto com o Chacruna Institute, enviou duas solicitações baseadas na lei de liberdade de informação [Freedom Of Information Act] à DEA e ao Departamento de Justiça...
Scientific Reports
July 14, 2024
Annie C. Souza, Bryan C. Souza, Arthur França et al.
1 citation
The original version of this Article contained an error in Affiliation 6, which was incorrectly given as ‘Brain Network Dynamics Unit, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.’ The correct affiliation is listed below:
Scientific Reports
May 17, 2024
Annie C. Souza, Bryan C. Souza, Arthur França et al.
7 citations
5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) is a potent classical psychedelic known to induce changes in locomotion, behaviour, and sleep in rodents. However, there is limited knowledge regarding its acute neurophysiological effects. Local field potentials (LFPs) are commonly used as a proxy for neural activity, but previous studies investigating psychedelics have been hindered by confounding...
Jornal Brasileiro de Psiquiatria
2024
Dráulio Barros de Araújo, Tiago Arruda Sanchez, Sidarta Ribeiro
1 citation
The use of psychedelic substances has intrigued, benefited, and challenged humanity for millennia. These substances, found regularly in nature, are known to induce non-ordinary states of consciousness. They provide heightened sensory, emotional and cognitive experiences, which include augmented visual imagery, changes in thought, mood, and awareness, perception of space-time and reality and, in...
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
June 9, 2023
Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Anna O. Ermakova, Jordan Sloshower et al.
1 citation
Abstract On February 2023, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released a document to the legal team representing the Church of the Eagle and the Condor (“CEC”). This disclosure came two years after the church, in conjunction with Chacruna Institute, submitted two FOIA requests to the DEA and the Department of Justice requesting all records pertaining to ayahuasca. This report, titled...
Psychological Medicine
March 1, 2023
Isabel Wießner, Marcelo Falchi, Fernanda Palhano-Fontes et al.
53 citations
For a century, psychedelics have been investigated as models of psychosis for demonstrating phenomenological similarities with psychotic experiences and as therapeutic models for treating depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. This study sought to explore this paradoxical relationship connecting key parameters of the psychotic experience, psychotherapy, and psychedelic experience. In...
European neuropsychopharmacology : the journal of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
March 1, 2023
Isabel Wießner, Marcelo Falchi, Dimitri Daldegan-Bueno et al.
6 citations
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]:...
Neuroimage
October 17, 2022
Natália Bezerra Mota, Ernesto Soares, Edgar Altszyler et al.
5 citations
The 'day residue' - the presence of waking memories into dreams - is a century-old concept that remains controversial in neuroscience. Even at the psychological level, it remains unclear how waking imagery cedes into dreams. Are visual and affective residues enhanced, modified, or erased at sleep onset? Are they linked, or dissociated? What are the neural correlates of these transformations? To...
Experimental Neurology
June 1, 2022
Isis M. Ornelas, F. A. Cini, Isabel Wießner et al.
37 citations
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...
Psychopharmacology
June 1, 2022
Isabel Wießner, Marcelo Falchi, Fernanda Palhano-Fontes et al.
22 citations
Stream of thought describes the nature of the mind when it is freely roaming, a mental state that is continuous and highly dynamic as in mind-wandering or free association. Classic serotonergic psychedelics are known to profoundly impact perception, cognition and language, yet their influence on the stream of thought remains largely unexplored. To elucidate the effects of LSD on the stream of...
European neuropsychopharmacology : the journal of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
May 1, 2022
Isabel Wießner, Rodolfo Olivieri, Marcelo Falchi et al.
42 citations
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,...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
February 1, 2022
Isabel Wießner, Marcelo Falchi-Carvalho, Lucas Oliveira Maia et al.
43 citations
Background: Controversy surrounds psychedelics and their potential to boost creativity. To date, psychedelic studies lack a uniform conceptualization of creativity and methodologically rigorous designs. Aims: This study aimed at addressing previous issues by examining the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on creativity using multimodal tasks and multidimensional approaches. Methods:...
PLoS One
2022
P Kelly, Tainá Macêdo, T Felipe et al.
3 citations
The COVID-19 pandemic changed people's lives all over the world. While anxiety and stress decreased sleep quality for most people, an increase in total sleep time was also observed in certain cohorts. Dream recall frequency also increased, especially for nightmares. However, to date, there are no consistent reports focusing on pandemic-related changes in lucid dreaming, a state during which...
Revista brasileira de psiquiatria (Sao Paulo, Brazil : 1999)
2021
Alvaro V Jardim, Dora V Jardim, Bruno Rasmussen Chaves et al.
54 citations
To conduct Brazil's first clinical trial employing 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted psychotherapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), given its high prevalence resulting from epidemic violence. Of 60 volunteers, four matched the inclusion & exclusion criteria. Three patients with PTSD secondary to sexual abuse (diagnosed by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV...
Conscious Cogn
December 8, 2020
Camila Sanz, Carla Pallavicini, Facundo Carrillo et al.
34 citations
Serotonergic psychedelics have been suggested to mirror certain aspects of psychosis, and, more generally, elicit a state of consciousness underpinned by increased entropy of on-going neural activity. We investigated the hypothesis that language produced under the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) should exhibit increased entropy and reduced semantic coherence. Computational analysis...
PLoS One
November 30, 2020
Natália Bezerra Mota, Janaína Weissheimer, Marina Ribeiro et al.
71 citations
The current global threat brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic has led to widespread social isolation, posing new challenges in dealing with metal suffering related to social distancing, and in quickly learning new social habits intended to prevent contagion. Neuroscience and psychology agree that dreaming helps people to cope with negative emotions and to learn from experience, but can dreaming...
PLoS One
July 23, 2020
Joshua M. Martin, Danyal Wainstein Andriano, Natália Bezerra Mota et al.
41 citations
Dream reports collected after rapid eye movement sleep (REM) awakenings are, on average, longer, more vivid, bizarre, emotional and story-like compared to those collected after non-REM. However, a comparison of the word-to-word structural organization of dream reports is lacking, and traditional measures that distinguish REM and non-REM dreaming may be confounded by report length. This problem...
medRxiv
May 21, 2020
Natália Bezerra Mota, Janaína Weissheimer, Marina Ribeiro et al.
7 citations
preprint
Neuroscience and psychology agree that dreaming helps to cope with negative emotions and learn from experience. The current global threat related to the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread social isolation. Does dreaming change and/or reflect mental suffering? To address these questions, we applied natural language processing tools to study 239 dream reports from 67 individuals either before...
Frontiers in Psychology
2020
Sérgio Mota-Rolim, Kelly Bulkeley, Stephany Campanelli et al.
31 citations
Lucid dreaming (LD) began to be scientifically studied in the last century, but various religions have highlighted the importance of LD in their doctrines for a much longer period. Hindus' manuscripts dating back over 2,000 years ago, for example, divide consciousness in waking, dreaming (including LD), and deep sleep. In the Buddhist tradition, Tibetan monks have been practicing the "Dream...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
December 6, 2019
Felipe Augusto Cini da Silva, Isis M. Ornelas, Encarni Marcos et al.
9 citations
preprint
Abstract Psychedelic agonists of serotonin receptors induce neural plasticity and synaptogenesis, but their potential to enhance learning remains uncharted. Here we show that a single dose of d-LSD, a potent serotonergic agonist, increased novel object preference in young and adult rats several days after treatment. d-LSD alone did not increase preference in old animals, but could rescue it to...
Frontiers in Neuroscience
May 8, 2019
Sérgio Mota-Rolim, Achilleas Pavlou, George Nascimento et al.
25 citations
One of the main current challenges in lucid dreaming (LD) research is to develop a simple and reliable way to induce it (Stumbrys et al., 2012). This is because, for most people, LD is very pleasurable but also very rare (LaBerge and Rheingold, 1990; Mota-Rolim et al., 2013). Along with its recreational nature, LD also has potential clinical applications, such as the treatment of recurrent...
Consciousness and Cognition
November 1, 2017
Edgar Altszyler, Sidarta Ribeiro, Mariano Sigman et al.
Computer-based dreams content analysis relies on word frequencies within predefined categories in order to identify different elements in text. As a complementary approach, we explored the capabilities and limitations of word-embedding techniques to identify word usage patterns among dream reports. These tools allow us to quantify words associations in text and to identify the meaning of target...
Scientific Reports
October 9, 2017
Vanja Dakic, Juliana Minardi Nascimento, Rafaela Costa Sartore et al.
137 citations
Dimethyltryptamines are entheogenic serotonin-like molecules present in traditional Amerindian medicine recently associated with cognitive gains, antidepressant effects, and changes in brain areas related to attention. Legal restrictions and the lack of adequate experimental models have limited the understanding of how such substances impact human brain metabolism. Here we used shotgun mass...