An editorial discusses the potential for psychedelic drugs to treat obesity and eating disorders, highlighting that 5-HT2A receptor agonism boosts neuroplasticity in the prefrontal cortex, a region involved in inhibitory control that is altered in obesity. However, rodent studies show conflicting results on weight loss after psilocybin. A key concern is cardiac valvulopathy from off-target 5-HT2B receptor agonism, especially for individuals with underlying cardiac issues from obesity or eating disorders. Next-generation psychedelics with lower 5-HT2B affinity may reduce these risks. Weight-adjusted dosing and specialized psychotherapy are also important considerations.
Patients with borderline personality disorder who experience high levels of dissociative symptoms show diminished emotional learning during aversive conditioning, as measured by skin conductance responses, compared to patients without dissociation and healthy controls. The dissociative group showed no increase in valence or arousal to the conditioned stimulus and no differential skin conductance responses during acquisition or extinction phases. These differences were not explained by general psychopathology, trauma history, perceptual differences, or posttraumatic stress disorder. The findings suggest that state dissociation inhibits amygdala-based emotional learning processes, which may have implications for exposure-based psychotherapy.