bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
August 22, 2025
Jose A Cortes-Briones, Juan Urrutia-Gandolfo, Pablo A Estevez et al.
preprint
The balance between excitatory and inhibitory (E/I) activity is critical for brain function, and its disruption is implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders. Electrophysiological signals can be decomposed into periodic (oscillatory) and aperiodic components. In the power spectrum, the periodic component appears as narrowband peaks, while the aperiodic component underlies its characteristic 1 / f...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
June 30, 2023
Jordan Sloshower, Hamideh Safi-Aghdam, Surbhi Pathania et al.
47 citations
Background: Evidence suggests that serotonergic psychedelics (e.g. psilocybin), have rapid-acting and long-lasting antidepressant effects after a single dose. However, the mechanism underlying these effects remain unclear. One proposed mechanism is that these drugs promote neuroplasticity. However, this has not been conclusively demonstrated in humans. Aims: We hypothesized that relative to...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
March 20, 2023
Jordan Sloshower, Hamideh Safi-Aghdam, Surbhi Pathania et al.
153 citations
Background: Several early phase studies have demonstrated that psilocybin-assisted therapy has rapid-acting and persisting antidepressant effects from just one or two doses. However, methodological limitations (e.g., placebo-control, blinding) limit interpretability of the existing literature. Methods: In an exploratory placebo-controlled, within-subject, fixed-order study, individuals with...
Clinical EEG and Neuroscience
November 25, 2022
Shariful A. Syed, Ashley M. Schnakenberg Martin, Jose A Cortes-Briones et al.
Disruptions in neural oscillations are believed to be one critical mechanism by which cannabinoids, such as delta-9-tetrahyrdrocannabinol (THC; the primary psychoactive constituent of cannabis), perturbs brain function. Here we briefly review the role of synchronized neural activity, particularly in the gamma (30–80 Hz) and theta (4–7 Hz) frequency range, in sensation, perception, and...
Neuropharmacology
June 2018
Patrick D Skosnik, Mihály Hajós, Jose A Cortes-Briones et al.
Cannabis use has been associated with altered sensory gating and neural oscillations. However, it is unclear which constituent in cannabis is responsible for these effects, or whether these are cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1R) mediated. Therefore, the present study in humans and rats examined whether cannabinoid administration would disrupt sensory gating and evoked oscillations utilizing...
Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry
October 3, 2017
Mohini Ranganathan, Rajiv Radhakrishnan, Peter H Addy et al.
Cannabis and agonists of the brain cannabinoid receptor (CB1R) produce acute memory impairments in humans. However, the extent to which cannabinoids impair the component processes of encoding and retrieval has not been established in humans. The objective of this analysis was to determine whether the administration of Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal psychoactive constituent of...
Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology
August 2015
Jose Cortes-Briones, Patrick D Skosnik, Daniel Mathalon et al.
Gamma (γ)-band oscillations play a key role in perception, associative learning, and conscious awareness and have been shown to be disrupted by cannabinoids in animal studies. The goal of this study was to determine whether cannabinoids disrupt γ-oscillations in humans and whether these effects relate to their psychosis-relevant behavioral effects. The acute, dose-related effects of...
Psychopharmacology
November 24, 2012
R. A. Sewell, Ashley Schnakenberg, Jacqueline Elander et al.
Cannabinoids have been shown to alter time perception, but existing literature has several limitations. Few studies have included both time estimation and production tasks, few control for subvocal counting, most had small sample sizes, some did not record subjects’ cannabis use, many tested only one dose, and used either oral or inhaled administration of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), leading...
Biological Psychiatry
November 15, 2012
Mohini Ranganathan, Ashley Schnakenberg, Patrick D. Skosnik et al.
125 citations
Salvia divinorum (Salvia) is an increasingly popular recreational drug amongst adolescents and young adults. Its primary active ingredient, Salvinorin A (SA)-a highly selective agonist at the κ opiate receptor-is believed to be one of the most potent naturally occurring hallucinogens. However, there is little experimental data on the effects of SA in humans. In a 3-day, double-blind,...
Behavioral Neuroscience
August 1, 2009
Chad R. Edwards, P. Skosnik, Adam B. Steinmetz et al.
Central cannabinoid receptors are thought to mediate neural oscillations and are localized to brain regions implicated in auditory P50 sensory gating, including the hippocampus and neocortex. The current study therefore examined if neural oscillations evoked by the paired clicks (S1, S2) are associated with impaired P50 gating reported in cannabis users. Seventeen heavy cannabis users and 16...
The American journal of psychiatry
October 2006
Patrick D Skosnik, Giri P Krishnan, Erin E Aydt et al.
Cannabis use may produce neurophysiological disturbances similar to those observed in schizophrenia, particularly in relation to altered neural synchronization. Therefore, the current experiment examined the effect of cannabis use on EEG neural synchronization using the auditory steady-state evoked potential. Auditory steady-state evoked potentials were assessed using varying rates of...
Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology
January 2006
Patrick D Skosnik, Giri P Krishnan, Jenifer L Vohs et al.
Cannabis use often induces subjective distortions of perception. However, little work has been done examining the electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of early sensory processing in cannabis users. The present study therefore examined visual function in cannabis users as assessed via the steady state visual evoked potential. (SSVEP). SSVEPs were examined in current cannabis users (n = 17;...