Molecular Psychiatry
July 7, 2026
Axel F. Rosado, Abigail L. Yu, Jen-Hau Yang et al.
Classic serotonergic psychedelics such as psilocybin act as agonists at cortical serotonin (5-HT) 2A receptors (5-HT 2A R), inducing psychedelic effects in humans and head-twitch responses (HTRs) in rodents. Another class of psychedelic drugs called entactogens, exemplified by MDMA, function primarily as monoamine releasers and typically evoke minimal HTR despite causing serotonin release. The...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
March 10, 2026
Gabriele Floris, Sarah J. Jefferson, Jocelyne Rondeau et al.
preprint
Abstract New treatments for depression are needed that combine robust efficacy with improved scalability. Although psilocybin has demonstrated antidepressant effects in Phase 3 clinical trials, some of its psychedelic effects limit tolerability, necessitating administration in highly supervised clinical settings, and thus motivating development of serotonergic therapeutics that preserve...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
March 8, 2026
Nitzan Geva, Sarah J. Jefferson, Emi Krishnamurthy et al.
preprint
Abstract Fear extinction requires dynamic updating of cortical representations, yet the neural mechanisms underlying successful extinction remain poorly understood. Some psychoactive substances induce structural plasticity in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), possibly underlying their therapeutic potential. Here we investigated whether MDMA, which enhances fear extinction, induces prefrontal...
Nature Communications
February 12, 2025
Farid Aboharb, Pasha A. Davoudian, Ling-Xiao Shao et al.
19 citations
Psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA are psychoactive compounds that exert behavioral effects with distinguishable but also overlapping features. The growing interest in using these compounds as therapeutics necessitates preclinical assays that can accurately screen psychedelics and related analogs. We posit that a promising approach may be to measure drug action on markers of neural plasticity in...
bioRxiv
May 26, 2024
Farid Aboharb, Pasha A. Davoudian, Ling-Xiao Shao et al.
preprint
Psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA are psychoactive compounds that exert behavioral effects with distinguishable but also overlapping features. The growing interest in using these compounds as therapeutics necessitates preclinical assays that can accurately screen psychedelics and related analogs. We posit that a promising approach may be to measure drug action on markers of neural plasticity in...
Neuropsychopharmacology
June 2023
Sarah K. Fineberg, Esther Y Choi, Rosa Shapiro-Thompson et al.
This study is the first randomized controlled trial to test the effects of ketamine in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). BPD remains undertreated in the community and no medication has FDA approval for this indication. People with BPD experience chronic mood disturbances with depressed mood, suicidal ideation, and severe social difficulties. In this double-blind, randomized controlled...