PLoS One
August 23, 2013
T. Batink, Frenk Peeters, Nicole Geschwind et al.
Mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is a non-pharmacological intervention to reduce current symptoms and to prevent recurrence of major depressive disorder. At present, it is not well understood which underlying mechanisms during MBCT are associated with its efficacy. The current study (n = 130) was designed to examine the roles of mindfulness skills, rumination, worry and affect, and...
PLoS One
August 19, 2013
Teri Suzanne Krebs, Pål-ørjan Johansen
338 citations
BACKGROUND: The classical serotonergic psychedelics LSD, psilocybin, mescaline are not known to cause brain damage and are regarded as non-addictive. Clinical studies do not suggest that psychedelics cause long-term mental health problems. Psychedelics have been used in the Americas for thousands of years. Over 30 million people currently living in the US have used LSD, psilocybin, or...
PLoS One
August 15, 2013
Jeongkyu Shin, George A. Mashour, Seungwoo Ku et al.
16 citations
General anesthesia significantly alters brain network connectivity. Graph-theoretical analysis has been used extensively to study static brain networks but may be limited in the study of rapidly changing brain connectivity during induction of or recovery from general anesthesia. Here we introduce a novel method to study the temporal evolution of network modules in the brain. We recorded...
PLoS One
June 12, 2013
Philip R. Corlett, Victoria C. Cambridge, Jennifer M. Gardner et al.
104 citations
Delusions are the persistent and often bizarre beliefs that characterise psychosis. Previous studies have suggested that their emergence may be explained by disturbances in prediction error-dependent learning. Here we set up complementary studies in order to examine whether such a disturbance also modulates memory reconsolidation and hence explains their remarkable persistence. First, we...
PLoS One
May 23, 2013
Pawel Z. Kosentka, Sarah L. Sprague, Martin Ryberg et al.
79 citations
Mushroom-forming fungi produce a wide array of toxic alkaloids. However, evolutionary analyses aimed at exploring the evolution of muscarine, a toxin that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, and psilocybin, a hallucinogen, have never been performed. The known taxonomic distribution of muscarine within the Inocybaceae is limited, based only on assays of species from temperate regions...
PLoS One
May 22, 2013
Adrienne A. Taren, J. David Creswell, Peter J. Gianaros
127 citations
Mindfulness, a psychological process reflecting attention and awareness to what is happening in the present moment, has been associated with increased well-being and decreased depression and anxiety in both healthy and patient populations. However, little research has explored underlying neural pathways. Recent work suggests that mindfulness (and mindfulness training interventions) may foster...
PLoS One
April 9, 2013
Oliver G. Bosch, Michael Wagner, Frank Jessen et al.
34 citations
Verbal learning and recall deficits of recreational MDMA users are correlated with glucose hypometabolism in prefrontal and parietal cortex, while word recognition was additionally correlated with mediotemporal hypometabolism. We conclude that memory deficits of MDMA users arise from combined fronto-parieto-mediotemporal dysfunction.
PLoS One
March 29, 2013
Neurocognitive and somatic components of temperature increases during g-tummo meditation: legend and reality.
PLoS One
March 27, 2013
Marie Thonnard, Vanessa Charland-Verville, Serge Brédart et al.
140 citations
Since the dawn of time, Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) have intrigued and, nowadays, are still not fully explained. Since reports of NDEs are proposed to be imagined events, and since memories of imagined events have, on average, fewer phenomenological characteristics than real events memories, we here compared phenomenological characteristics of NDEs reports with memories of imagined and real...
PLoS One
February 4, 2013
Xiancang Ma, Yonghui Dang, Min Jia et al.
115 citations
BACKGROUND: Clinical studies demonstrate that the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, ketamine, induces rapid antidepressant effects in patients with refractive major depressive disorder and bipolar depression. This rapid onset of action makes ketamine a highly attractive drug for patients, particularly those who do not typically respond to therapy. A recent study suggested that...
PLoS One
2013
Quinton Deeley, Eamonn Walsh, David A Oakley et al.
48 citations
The feeling of voluntary control and awareness of movement is fundamental to our notions of selfhood and responsibility for actions, yet can be lost in neuropsychiatric syndromes (e.g. delusions of control, non-epileptic seizures) and culturally influenced dissociative states (e.g. attributions of spirit possession). The brain processes involved remain poorly understood. We used suggestion and...
PLoS One
2013
Tamara Antonio, Steven R Childers, Richard B Rothman et al.
36 citations
The iboga alkaloids are a class of small molecules defined structurally on the basis of a common ibogamine skeleton, some of which modify opioid withdrawal and drug self-administration in humans and preclinical models. These compounds may represent an innovative approach to neurobiological investigation and development of addiction pharmacotherapy. In particular, the use of the prototypic iboga...
PLoS One
2013
Shaheen E. Lakhan, Kerry L Schofield
Mindfulness-based therapy (MBT) has been used effectively to treat a variety of physical and psychological disorders, including depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. Recently, several lines of research have explored the potential for mindfulness-therapy in treating somatization disorders, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and irritable bowel syndrome. Thirteen studies were...
PLoS One
2013
Levin Kuhlmann, Brett L Foster, David T. J. Liley
Parietal networks are hypothesised to play a central role in the cortical information synthesis that supports conscious experience and behavior. Significant reductions in parietal level functional connectivity have been shown to occur during general anesthesia with propofol and a range of other GABAergic general anesthetic agents. Using two analysis approaches (1) a graph theoretic analysis...
PLoS One
December 18, 2012
Stanley C. Flavel, Jenna D. Koch, Jason M. White et al.
30 citations
Use of illicit stimulants such as methamphetamine, cocaine, and ecstasy is a significant health problem. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that 14-57 million people use stimulants each year. Chronic use of illicit stimulants can cause neurotoxicity in animals and humans but the long-term functional consequences are not well understood. Stimulant users self-report problems...
PLoS One
October 24, 2012
Ricardo Pardo‐lozano, M. Farré, Samanta Yubero‐lahoz et al.
67 citations
The synthetic psychostimulant MDMA (±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, ecstasy) acts as an indirect serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine agonist and as a mechanism-based inhibitor of the cytochrome P-450 2D6 (CYP2D6). It has been suggested that women are more sensitive to MDMA effects than men but no clinical experimental studies have satisfactorily evaluated the factors contributing to...
PLoS One
September 25, 2012
Kieran C. R. Fox, Pierre Zakarauskas, Matthew L. Dixon et al.
194 citations
The accuracy of subjective reports, especially those involving introspection of one's own internal processes, remains unclear, and research has demonstrated large individual differences in introspective accuracy. It has been hypothesized that introspective accuracy may be heightened in persons who engage in meditation practices, due to the highly introspective nature of such practices. We...
PLoS One
September 24, 2012
Milan Scheidegger, Martin Walter, Mick Lehmann et al.
282 citations
Increasing preclinical and clinical evidence underscores the strong and rapid antidepressant properties of the glutamate-modulating NMDA receptor antagonist ketamine. Targeting the glutamatergic system might thus provide a novel molecular strategy for antidepressant treatment. Since glutamate is the most abundant and major excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain, pathophysiological changes in...
PLoS One
August 15, 2012
Tatia M C Lee, Mei-Kei Leung, Wai-Kai Hou et al.
163 citations
This study examined the dissociable neural effects of ānāpānasati (focused-attention meditation, FAM) and mettā (loving-kindness meditation, LKM) on BOLD signals during cognitive (continuous performance test, CPT) and affective (emotion-processing task, EPT, in which participants viewed affective pictures) processing. Twenty-two male Chinese expert meditators (11 FAM experts, 11 LKM experts)...
PLoS One
August 8, 2012
José Carlos Bouso, Débora González, Sabela Fondevila et al.
313 citations
Ayahuasca is an Amazonian psychoactive plant beverage containing the serotonergic 5-HT(2A) agonist N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and monoamine oxidase-inhibiting alkaloids (harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine) that render it orally active. Ayahuasca ingestion is a central feature in several Brazilian syncretic churches that have expanded their activities to urban Brazil, Europe and North...
PLoS One
July 10, 2012
Janelle H. P. van Wel, Kim P. C. Kuypers, Eef L. Theunissen et al.
121 citations
UNLABELLED: MDMA induces positive mood and increases impulse control during intoxication, but only a few studies on the neuropharmacological mechanisms underlying these processes have been conducted. It was hypothesized that pretreatment with 5-HT(1) and 5-HT(2) receptor blockers would prevent MDMA effects on mood and impulsivity. Subjects (N = 17) participated in a double-blind, placebo...
PLoS One
June 29, 2012
Laura Moreno-López, Emmanuel A. Stamatakis, María José Fernández-serrano et al.
73 citations
INTRODUCTION: Functional imaging studies of addiction following protracted abstinence have not been systematically conducted to look at the associations between severity of use of different drugs and brain dysfunction. Findings from such studies may be relevant to implement specific interventions for treatment. The aim of this study was to examine the association between resting-state regional...
PLoS One
May 15, 2012
A Chiesa, A Chiesa, A Chiesa et al.
217 citations
Two experiments examined the relation between mindfulness practice and cognitive rigidity by using a variation of the Einstellung water jar task. Participants were required to use three hypothetical jars to obtain a specific amount of water. Initial problems were solvable by the same complex formula, but in later problems (“critical” or “trap” problems) solving was possible by an additional...
PLoS One
May 4, 2012
Cédric M. Hysek, Linda D. Simmler, V.g. Nicola et al.
158 citations
UNLABELLED: This study assessed the effects of the serotonin (5-HT) and norepinephrine (NE) transporter inhibitor duloxetine on the effects of 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA, ecstasy) in vitro and in 16 healthy subjects. The clinical study used a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, four-session, crossover design. In vitro, duloxetine blocked the release of both 5-HT and NE...
PLoS One
April 6, 2012
Jonathan Smallwood, Kevin Brown, Benjamin Baird et al.
92 citations
Although consciousness can be brought to bear on both perceptual and internally generated information, little is known about how these different cognitive modes are coordinated. Here we show that between-participant variance in thoughts unrelated to the task being performed (known as task unrelated thought, TUT) is associated with longer response times (RT) when target presentation occurs...