L'Encephale
July 1, 2026
Ana Beatriz Pereira de Oliveira, Matthieu Hein
INTRODUCTION Given the contrasting results available in the literature, the objective of this systematic review was to investigate the specific impact of illicit use of classic psychedelics (psilocybin, LSD, DMT, mescaline) on suicidality (suicidal ideation, suicide planning, suicide attempts, suicides). METHOD According to PRISMA criteria, a systematic review of the literature was carried out...
L'Encephale
June 1, 2026
Alix Romier, Jeanne Leseur, Anne Moroy et al.
Suicidal behaviors-including suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and suicide deaths-represent a major global health concern. Identifying proximal, modifiable risk factors is crucial to improve early detection and prevention. Sleep disturbances have emerged as proximal and modifiable risk factor for suicide, yet their role is often underestimated in clinical practice. This chapter synthesizes...
L'Encephale
June 1, 2026
Pierre A Geoffroy, Sammy Saadi, Sibylle Mauries et al.
Hyperonirism, or "epic dreaming," is an emerging clinical phenomenon characterized by excessive, vivid, and continuous dream activity associated with non-restorative sleep and daytime fatigue. Despite historical descriptions, it remains poorly defined and unrecognized by current nosological systems. We describe four patients assessed in expert sleep and psychiatry centers, presenting with...
L'Encephale
April 9, 2026
Amel Bouloufa, Sarah Delcourte, Thomas Delannay et al.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) represents a colossal worldwide burden of health, affecting more than 350 million individuals. While traditional antidepressants with mechanisms of action at the serotonin, dopamine, or norepinephrine pathways are routinely prescribed, approximately one-third of patients fail to achieve adequate remission and develop treatment-resistant depression (TRD). This...
L'Encephale
April 7, 2026
Déborah Eymond, Alyson Miquel, Anais Duffaud et al.
Military personnel are frequently exposed to traumatic situations that can lead to chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD complicates their reintegration due to the high risk of retraumatization. To support the reintegration of injured servicemen and women, the army has developed the Omega program which includes courses at the Centre des Blessés de l'Armée de Terre (CReBAT). These...
L'Encephale
August 1, 2025
Andreas Rosén Rasmussen, Helene Stephensen, Julie Nordgaard et al.
This paper is a French translation of the Examination of Anomalous Fantasy and Imagination (EAFI), an instrument for a semi-structured, phenomenological exploration of psychopathology of imagination, particularly within the schizophrenia-spectrum. In this paper, we provide a French translation of the EAFI together with an introduction about the phenomenology of imagination and its experiential...
L'Encephale
May 23, 2025
Maroussia Dumenil, Gabriel Cordova, Wissam El-Hage
1 citation
Current antidepressants have shown certain limitations in the treatment of unipolar depression. Their long onset of action, interactions, and side effects are obstacles to achieving lasting remission of this prevalent, often chronic or recurrent, pathology. Faced with this clinical necessity, research efforts have intensified in recent years around psychedelic drugs, with a particular focus on...
L'Encephale
April 4, 2025
George A. Michael, Sara Salgues, Geoffrey Duran
Complex bodily hallucinations are not rare in psychiatric, neurological and toxicological conditions and may also be reported even in the total absence of any medical condition. Despite this, they are usually not clinically assessed independently from (and in comparison to) hallucinations in other modalities. The objective of this study was to develop a short scale assessing complex bodily...
L'Encephale
February 1, 2025
Doriane Dost, Amine Benyamina, Laurent Karila
Current scientific literature supports classical psychedelic efficacy in many psychiatric disorders. However, less attention has been given to the neurological effects of these substances. The aim of this medical thesis was to conduct a systematic review examining the neuroimaging correlates of the effects of psychedelics. We performed an electronic research through Medline and Science Direct...
L'Encephale
August 1, 2024
Fabrice Berna, Amaury C Mengin, Philippe Huguelet et al.
7 citations
Mindfulness meditation has gained prominence in somatic and psychiatric care in several countries including France. Studies have shown its effectiveness in various conditions, in particular the prevention of depressive relapses. However, there are criticisms and concerns about its potential links to Buddhism and spirituality, raising issues of secularism and sectarianism. This issue is...
L'Encephale
October 1, 2023
R Ouchene, N El Habchi, Anastasia Demina et al.
24 citations
Nightmares can be defined as "an unpleasant dream with anxiety and oppression". They represent a symptom possibly leading to serious psychiatric and physical consequences. It occurs to 2% to 8% of the general population. Lucid dreaming therapy (LDT) is an interesting upcoming psychotherapy for the treatment of nightmares. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of LDT in the...
L'Encephale
November 1, 2022
J. Hulot, Jean-Baptiste Roseau, D. Gomez-Mérino et al.
INTRODUCTION Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a major public health problem. The most frequent complaints in this pathology are sleep disorders and trauma-related nightmares in particular. Trauma-related nightmares are characteristic of PTSD and impact its severity insofar as they are associated with more severe, longer-lasting symptoms and resistance to first-line treatments. There are...
L'Encephale
August 1, 2022
Hugo Bottemanne, Y Longuet, Christophe Gauld
The question of how the mind works is at the heart of cognitive science. It aims to understand and explain the complex processes underlying perception, decision-making and learning, three fundamental areas of cognition. Bayesian Brain Theory, a computational approach derived from the principles of Predictive Processing (PP), offers a mechanistic and mathematical formulation of these cognitive...
L'Encephale
June 1, 2022
Hugo Bottemanne, A Baldacci, C Muller et al.
7 citations
Ketamine, a non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist, is used as a fast-acting antidepressant therapy in depressive disorders. This treatment provokes dissociative effects associating derealization and depersonalization, and a synaptogenic signaling cascade promoting brain plasticity. Despite several preliminary studies suggesting the usefulness of its combination with psychotherapy,...
L'Encephale
December 1, 2021
Hugo Bottemanne, A Chevance, L Joly
Philosophy of Mind is currently one of the most prolific fields of research in philosophy and has witnessed a progressive hybridization with cognitive science. It focuses on fundamental questions to neuroscience and psychiatry, such as the nature of mental states and cognitive processes, or the relationships between mental states and the world. Anticipating the accumulation of experimental data...
L'Encephale
August 1, 2021
Lucie Berkovitch, Bruno Romeo, Laurent Karila et al.
25 citations
Psychedelics are powerful psychoactive substances. Natural psychedelics have been used for millennia by human civilizations, in particular in Latin America, while synthetic psychedelics were discovered in the 50s, giving rise to a lot of research before they were prohibited. More recently, their therapeutic properties have been studied especially to help patients with psychiatric conditions,...
L'Encephale
April 1, 2018
H Vanhuffel, M Rey, I Lambert et al.
Insomnia is considered to be a serious public health issue affecting approximately 10% of adults. Chronic insomnia may increase the risk of health problem, psychological vulnerability and proneness to accidents. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is recommended as the first line of treatment. Even though CBT-I is widely considered as an effective therapy, 20 to 30% of patients do...
L'Encephale
December 2017
M Gasnier, A Pelissolo, G Bondolfi et al.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a frequent and severe disease, potentially inducing a major impairment for the patient and burden for their family. Recent research in psychiatry and neuroscience have led to better comprehension of the disease's mechanisms and helped to improve its treatment. However, a large proportion of patients have refractory symptoms, including for traditional...
L'Encephale
December 1, 2015
D Carpentier, L Romo, P Bouthillon-Heitzmann et al.
For several years, the learning of mindfulness has developed in a psychological intervention perspective, particularly in the field of addiction. Presently, the management of addictions with substances is centered on two questions: the motivation in the change of behaviour and in a significant change in alcohol consumption. Concerning alcohol dependence, the evolution of behaviour is variable...
L'Encephale
December 1, 2014
M Trousselard, D Steiler, D Claverie et al.
The first part of this paper describes the long history of the concept of Mindfulness. Contrary to the belief that Mindfulness only has Buddhist and Hindu origins, it is also rooted in Jewish, Islamic and Christian religions. Furthermore, western philosophers have described a mindful path to become more aware of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. Mindfulness can be considered as a...
L'Encephale
December 2012
S Bourgou, S Halayem, A Bouden et al.
Initiating psychiatric treatment depends on several factors including clinical, personal, familial and economic factors. In the case of a first psychotic episode in an adolescent, parents, especially mothers, have a critical role in initiating psychiatric treatment for their child. In this study, we investigated mothers' beliefs about their child's first psychotic episode. Participants were...
L'Encephale
October 2011
S Skanavi, X Laqueille, H-J Aubin
In substance use disorders, the lack of empirically supported treatments and the minimal utilization of available programs indicate that innovative approaches are needed. Mindfulness based therapies have been used in addictive disorders for the last 10years. Mindfulness can be defined as the ability to focus open, non-judgmental attention to the full experience of internal and external...
L'Encephale
October 2011
J Graux, M Lemoine, P Gaillard et al.
Cenesthesia and cenesthopathy have played a fundamental role in 19th and early 20th century French and German psychiatry. Cenesthesia refers to the internal, global, implicit and affective perception of one's own body. The concept of cenesthopathy was coined by Dupre and Camus in 1907 to describe a clinical entity characterized by abnormal and strange bodily sensations. In this review, we...