Ibogaine, a natural alkaloid, shows potential for treating substance use disorders, trauma, mood disorders, and suicidality, but clinical use is limited by safety concerns and regulatory barriers. Researchers are pursuing two main strategies: developing ibogaine-like compounds that keep broad effects while reducing risks, and creating selective 'bespoke' analogs targeting specific conditions like opioid use disorder, traumatic brain injury, or PTSD. The authors emphasize that the field should avoid oversimplified views that derivatives are uniformly better or interchangeable, and call for greater conceptual clarity and mechanistic humility as ibogaine-based therapies move toward regulated medical use.
Continuous EEG monitoring (CEEG) revealed increased brain activity while individuals recalled near-death experiences (NDE) and spiritual contemplative experiences (SCE). The amplitude of the CEEG envelope increased during both types of recall, with a greater increase for SCE, particularly in the frontal lobes. Statistical increments in absolute power for alpha and gamma brainwave bands occurred during both NDE and SCE recall. The authors conclude that CEEG is a useful method for continuously assessing dynamic brain changes during these experiences.
Memories of near-death experiences (NDE) and spiritual contemplative experiences (SCE) show similar brain activation patterns in delta, alpha, and gamma bands, along with frontal lobe activation, as measured by quantitative electroencephalography tomography. The Greyson Scale evaluation indicates a correlation between the attributes of NDE and SCE, such as cognitive timelessness, affective peace, transcendent oneness, and out-of-body sensations. SCE subjects exhibited statistically greater brain activation than NDE subjects. The study used QEEGt methodology, which incorporates MRI anatomical information to improve the precision of EEG source localization.