Journal of Affective Disorders
August 10, 2026
Yves Martins Varela, Patrícia Cavalcanti-Ribeiro, Geovan Menezes de Sousa et al.
BACKGROUND: Ketamine is an effective rapid-acting treatment for treatment-resistant depression (TRD), producing antidepressant effects within hours of administration. Because it induces states of heightened neuroplasticity and psychological openness, psychotherapy may enhance its therapeutic effects. METHODS: This exploratory, nonrandomized, open-label clinical trial evaluated the adjunctive...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
July 8, 2026
Raynara Bolcont, Fernanda Palhano-Fontes, Handersson Barros et al.
BACKGROUND: -dimethyltryptamine (DMT); however, long-term effects, including broader well-being dimensions, are sparsely explored across populations. AIMS: Investigating whether DMT produces sustained improvements in anxiety, life satisfaction, and quality of life, in both healthy individuals and patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD). METHODS: In 2 open-label clinical trials, 27...
Neuropharmacology
July 1, 2026
Anne Nathalia De Sousa-Silva, Clarissa de Almeida Moura, Carina Ioná De Oliveira Torres et al.
1 citation
N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is an naturally occurring indoleamine with hallucinogenic and antidepressant effects in humans. Here, we compared the effects of DMT and S-ketamine, a fast-acting antidepressant, in helpless mice. To induce helplessness, male single and group-housed mice were exposed to inescapable footshock stress; only helpless animals were subsequently treated with S-ketamine 10...
Journal of Psychiatric Research
July 1, 2026
K S de Freitas Goncalves, Vagner Deuel O de Tavares, Fernanda Palhano-Fontes et al.
ABSTRACT: Introduction Ketamine and esketamine have reemerged as promising interventions for treatment-resistant depression (TRD), yet debate persists regarding the clinical relevance of acute dissociative experiences. This secondary exploratory analysis examined the relationship between dissociative experiences induced by subcutaneous esketamine and antidepressant response in patients with...
medRxiv Preprint Server
May 31, 2026
Yves Martins Varela, Patrícia Cavalcanti-Ribeiro, Geovan Menezes de Sousa et al.
preprint
Background Ketamine has emerged as an effective rapid-acting treatment for treatment-resistant depression (TRD), producing significant antidepressant effects within hours of administration. Given ketamine’s capacity to induce states of heightened neuroplasticity and psychological openness, psychotherapy may represent a meaningful complement to its pharmacological effects — facilitating...
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
March 28, 2026
Yves Martins Varela, Vagner Deuel O de Tavares, Luiza Macedo Delgado et al.
1 citation
The use of psychedelics in the treatment of psychopathologies has been expanding, highlighting Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy (PAP) as a promising resource in mental health care. This systematic review investigates. This systematic review investigates whether and how cognitive-behavioral therapies are integrated with psychedelic substances—both classical and atypical—for the treatment of...
Journal of Affective Disorders
March 15, 2026
Patrícia Cavalcanti-Ribeiro, Lara Carvalho Araújo Melo De Souza, Vagner Deuel O de Tavares et al.
Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) remains a major clinical challenge, with inflammation increasingly implicated in its pathophysiology. C-reactive protein (CRP), an accessible biomarker, has emerged as a potential predictor of antidepressant response. While intravenous and intranasal ketamine have shown anti-inflammatory effects, evidence linking inflammation and clinical outcomes remains...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
December 11, 2025
Caroline L. Alves, Fernanda Palhano-Fontes, Thaise G. L. de O. Toutain et al.
Abstract Ayahuasca profoundly alters conscious experience, yet robust, time-resolved EEG markers of its network-level effects remain limited. We combined machine learning with complex-network analysis to quantify how functional connectivity reorganizes across time and hemispheres in resting-state EEG from a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial including three 5-min sessions:...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
December 4, 2025
Natan Silva-Costa, Jéssica Andrade Pessoa, Kátia Cristina Andrade et al.
Background: Psychedelics induce profound changes in perception and thinking; however, little is known about the neural mechanisms and prediction of these effects. Aims: Investigating ayahuasca-induced experiences, mind-wandering, and electroencephalogram (EEG) oscillations, beyond the prediction of subjective experiences by baseline EEG. Methods: In a randomised, double-blind,...
Nature Communications
August 13, 2025
William Wong, Rubén Herzog, Kátia Cristine Andrade et al.
10 citations
Magneto/electroencephalography (M/EEG) studies of dreaming are an essential paradigm in the investigation of neurocognitive processes of human consciousness during sleep, but they are limited by the number of observations that can be collected per study. Dream research also involves substantial methodological and conceptual variability, which poses problems for the integration of results. To...
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...
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
October 28, 2024
Kaike Thiê da Costa Gonçalves, Vagner Deuel O de Tavares, Maria Luiza de Morais Barros et al.
5 citations
This systematic review aims to elucidate the nexus between ketamine's psychoactive properties and its efficacy in treating a broad spectrum of psychiatric disorders. We searched three databases and used citation tracking to include 29 studies. Predominantly, mood disorders, including bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) (MDD + BD: + n = 25 studies), a large part of them...
Journal of Psychiatric Research
August 1, 2024
Eduardo Igor Torquato Cardoso Lopes, Patrícia Cavalcanti-Ribeiro, Fernanda Palhano-Fontes et al.
9 citations
Therapeutics for suicide management is limited, taking weeks to work. This open-label clinical trial with 18 treatment-resistant depressive patients tested subcutaneous esketamine (8 weekly sessions) for suicidality. We noted a rapid and enduring effect of subcutaneous esketamine, lasting from one week to six months post-treatment, assessed by the Beck Inventory for Suicidality (BSI). There was...
Journal of Ethnopharmacology
February 10, 2024
Tiago Arruda Sanchez, Lucas Rego Ramos, Felipe Araujo et al.
12 citations
Ayahuasca is a beverage used in Amazonian traditional medicine and it has been part of the human experience for millennia as well as other different psychoactive plants. Although Ayahuasca has been proposed as potentially therapeutic as an anxiolytic and antidepressant, whilst no studies have been carried out so far investigating their direct effect on brain emotional processing. This study...
medRxiv
January 4, 2024
Marcelo Falchi-Carvalho, Handersson Barros, Raynara Bolcont et al.
5 citations
preprint
Abstract Introduction N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a naturally occurring psychedelic tryptamine contained in the indigenous ayahuasca brew has shown antidepressant effects. This Phase 2a clinical trial investigates for the first time the efficacy of isolated DMT in treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Methods Six TRD patients participated in an open-label, fixed-order, dose-escalation study,...
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...
Science Advances
June 14, 2023
Leor Roseman, Christopher Timmermann, Daniel Golkowski et al.
65 citations
To understand how pharmacological interventions can exert their powerful effects on brain function, we need to understand how they engage the brain’s rich neurotransmitter landscape. Here, we bridge microscale molecular chemoarchitecture and pharmacologically induced macroscale functional reorganization, by relating the regional distribution of 19 neurotransmitter receptors and transporters...
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...
May 16, 2023
William Wong, Kátia C. Andrade, Thomas Andrillon et al.
21 citations
preprint
Magneto/electroencephalography (M/EEG) studies of dreaming are an essential paradigm in the investigation of neurocognitive processes of human consciousness during sleep, but they are limited by the number of observations that can be collected per study. Dream research also involves substantial methodological and conceptual variability, which poses problems for the integration of results. To...
Journal of Physics Complexity
March 1, 2023
Aline Viol, G. M. Viswanathan, Oleksandra Soldatkina et al.
4 citations
Abstract The physical basis of consciousness is one of the most intriguing open questions that contemporary science aims to solve. By approaching the brain as an interactive information system, complex network theory has greatly contributed to understand brain process in different states of mind. We study a non-ordinary state of mind by comparing resting-state functional brain networks of...
Europhysics Letters
January 24, 2023
Helcio Felippe, Aline Viol, Dráulio Barros de Araújo et al.
9 citations
Abstract There is demand in diverse fields for a reliable method of estimating the entropy associated with correlations. The estimation of a unique entropy directly from the Pearson correlation matrix has remained an open problem for more than half a century. All existing approaches lack generality insofar as they require thresholding choices that arbitrarily remove possibly important...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
December 5, 2022
Geovan Menezes de Sousa, Vagner Deuel de Oliveira Tavares, Ana Cecília de Menezes Galvão et al.
14 citations
Introduction The understanding of biological responses to psychedelics with antidepressant potential is imperative. Here we report how a set of acute parameters, namely emotional (depressive symptoms), cognitive (psychedelic experience), and physiological (salivary cortisol), recorded during an ayahuasca dosing session, modulated serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), serum cortisol...
PLoS One
September 7, 2022
Geissy Lainny de Lima-Araújo, Geovan Menezes de Sousa, Thatiane Aparecida Mendes et al.
64 citations
Interoception is a collection of different representations of signals originating within the body. The way of perceiving these signals seems to be related to both emotion regulation and dysregulation, and its dysfunction is implicated across a variety of affective disorders. There is a growing body of research investigating the relationship between mindfulness meditation practices and...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
July 13, 2022
Andrea I. Luppi, Justine Y. Hansen, Ram Adapa et al.
5 citations
preprint
Abstract To understand how pharmacological interventions can exert their powerful effects on brain function, we need to understand how they engage the brain’s rich neurotransmitter landscape. Here, we bridge microscale molecular chemoarchitecture and pharmacologically-induced macroscale functional reorganisation, by relating the regional distribution of 19 neurotransmitter receptors and...
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:...