Magic mushroom compound shows promise against cocaine addiction
Science May 7, 2026 Rachel Nuwer
Small study that prioritized Black and low-income participants yields "remarkable" results.
Science
ISSN 0036-8075; 1095-9203;
84 papers in the library · 18,715 citations · publishing 1954-2026
Papers
Psychedelic research at a crossroads
Science September 19, 2024 Stacey B. Armstrong, Alan K. Davis 6 citations
There is an urgent need to develop better treatments for mental health conditions that affect one in every eight people in the world. To combat this concern, psychedelic drugs have been combined with psychotherapy and studied in clinical trials in the United States and Europe. Psychedelics are hallucinogenic drugs that alter brain activity and facilitate altered states of consciousness. The...
AlphaFold2 structures guide prospective ligand discovery
Science May 16, 2024 Jiankun Lyu, Nicholas J. Kapolka, Ryan H. Gumpper et al. 145 citations
AlphaFold2 (AF2) models have had wide impact but mixed success in retrospective ligand recognition. We prospectively docked large libraries against unrefined AF2 models of the σ 2 and serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) receptors, testing hundreds of new molecules and comparing results with those obtained from docking against the experimental structures. Hit rates were high and similar for the experimental...
Pressing regulatory challenges for psychedelic medicine
Science April 27, 2023 Amy L. Mcguire, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Lewis A. Grossman et al. 20 citations
Policy must support generation of evidence on safety and effectiveness.
Psychedelics promote neuroplasticity through the activation of intracellular 5-HT2A receptors
Science February 16, 2023 Maxemiliano V. Vargas, Lee E. Dunlap, Chunyang Dong et al. 467 citations
Decreased dendritic spine density in the cortex is a hallmark of several neuropsychiatric diseases, and the ability to promote cortical neuron growth has been hypothesized to underlie the rapid and sustained therapeutic effects of psychedelics. Activation of 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin) 2A receptors (5-HT2ARs) is essential for psychedelic-induced cortical plasticity, but it is currently...
A cognitive process occurring during sleep revealed by rapid eye movements
Science August 25, 2022 Y. Senzai, M. Scanziani
Since the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the nature of the eye movements that characterize this sleep phase has remained elusive. Do they reveal gaze shifts in the virtual environment of dreams or simply reflect random brainstem activity? We harnessed the head direction (HD) system of the mouse thalamus, a neuronal population whose activity reports, in awake mice, their actual HD...
Structure-based discovery of nonhallucinogenic psychedelic analogs
Science January 27, 2022 Dongmei Cao, Jing Yu, Huan Wang et al. 306 citations
Drugs that target the human serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT 2A R) are used to treat neuropsychiatric diseases; however, many have hallucinogenic effects, hampering their use. Here, we present structures of 5-HT 2A R complexed with the psychedelic drugs psilocin (the active metabolite of psilocybin) and d -lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), as well as the endogenous neurotransmitter serotonin and the...
Embodying consciousnessFeeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious Antonio Damasio Pantheon, 2021. 256 pp.
Science November 4, 2021
Embodying consciousnessFeeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious Antonio Damasio Pantheon, 2021. 256 pp.
Making the hard problem of consciousness easier
Science May 28, 2021 Lucia Melloni, Liad Mudrik, Michael Pitts et al.
Championing open science, an adversarial collaboration aims to unravel the footprints of consciousness The history of science includes numerous challenging problems, including the “hard problem” (1) of consciousness: Why does an assembly of neurons—no matter how complex, such as the human brain—give rise to perceptions and feelings that are consciously experienced, such as the sweetness of...
A neural correlate of sensory consciousness in a corvid bird
Science September 25, 2020 A. Nieder, Lysann Wagener, Paul Rinnert
Consciousness shared Humans have tended to believe that we are the only species to possess certain traits, behaviors, or abilities, especially with regard to cognition. Occasionally, we extend such traits to primates or other mammals—species with which we share fundamental brain similarities. Over time, more and more of these supposed pillars of human exceptionalism have fallen. Nieder et al....
Sustained rescue of prefrontal circuit dysfunction by antidepressant-induced spine formation
Science April 12, 2019 R. N. Moda-Sava, Mitchell H. Murdock, Puja K Parekh et al.
Why is ketamine an antidepressant? A better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the action of antidepressants is urgently needed. Moda-Sava et al. explored a possible mode of action for the drug ketamine, which has recently been shown to help patients recover from depression (see the Perspective by Beyeler). Ketamine rescued behavior in mice that was associated with depression-like...
Conscious machines: Defining questions
Science January 25, 2018 Olivia Carter, Jakob Hohwy, Jeroen J A Van Boxtel et al. 86 citations
In their Review “What is consciousness, and could machines have it?” (27 October 2017, p. [486][1]), S. Dehaene et al. argue that the science of consciousness indicates that we are not on the verge of creating conscious machines. However, Dehaene et al. ask and answer the wrong questions. To
What is consciousness, and could machines have it?
Science October 27, 2017 Stanislas Dehaene, Hakwan Lau, S. Kouider
The controversial question of whether machines may ever be conscious must be based on a careful consideration of how consciousness arises in the only physical system that undoubtedly possesses it: the human brain. We suggest that the word “consciousness” conflates two different types of information-processing computations in the brain: the selection of information for global broadcasting, thus...
Breathing to inspire and arouse
Science March 31, 2017 S. Sheikhbahaei, Jeffrey C. Smith
A small population of brainstem neurons connects breathing behavior to brain arousal. Breathing is one of the perpetual rhythms of life that is often taken for granted, its apparent simplicity belying the complex neural machinery involved. This behavior is more complicated than just producing inspiration, as breathing is integrated with many other motor functions such as vocalization, orofacial...
Making phloem—a near-death experience
Science August 22, 2014 N. Geldner
How to get rid of the phloem cell nucleus to make a root-to-shoot tip transport system [Also see Report by Furuta et al. ]
Structural Basis for Molecular Recognition at Serotonin Receptors
Science March 22, 2013 Chong Wang, Yi Jiang, Jinming Ma et al. 522 citations
Dissecting Serotonin Receptors Serotonin receptors are the targets for many widely used drugs prescribed to treat ailments from depression to obesity and migraine headaches (see the Perspective by Palczewski and Kiser ). C. Wang et al. (p. 610 , published online 21 March) and Wacker et al. (p. 615 , published online 21 March) describe crystal structures of two members of the serotonin family of...
Structural Features for Functional Selectivity at Serotonin Receptors
Science March 21, 2013 Daniel Wacker, Chong Wang, Vsevolod Katritch et al. 689 citations
Dissecting Serotonin Receptors Serotonin receptors are the targets for many widely used drugs prescribed to treat ailments from depression to obesity and migraine headaches (see the Perspective by Palczewski and Kiser ). C. Wang et al. (p. 610 , published online 21 March) and Wacker et al. (p. 615 , published online 21 March) describe crystal structures of two members of the serotonin family of...
Synaptic Dysfunction in Depression: Potential Therapeutic Targets
Science October 4, 2012 Ronald S. Duman, George K. Aghajanian 1,613 citations
Basic and clinical studies demonstrate that depression is associated with reduced size of brain regions that regulate mood and cognition, including the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, and decreased neuronal synapses in these areas. Antidepressants can block or reverse these neuronal deficits, although typical antidepressants have limited efficacy and delayed response times of weeks to...
Magic Mint
Science December 16, 2010
Salvia divinorum may be this generation's answer to magic mushrooms. A hallucinogenic member of the mint family, it has been used for centuries by Mexican shamans for spiritual purposes. Within the past decade it's become popular as a legal high—at least where its use hasn't been outlawed. Now researchers at Johns Hopkins University have conducted the first human laboratory study on the plant,...
Unbounding the Mind The Extended Mind Richard Menary, Ed. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010. 390 pp. $40, £29.95. ISBN 9780262014038.
Science October 29, 2010 Erik Myin
The contributors examine Clark and Chalmers's claim that the mind is not confined to the head but extends into the world and discuss its implications.
mTOR-Dependent Synapse Formation Underlies the Rapid Antidepressant Effects of NMDA Antagonists
Science August 19, 2010 Nanxin Li, Boyoung Lee, Rongjian Liu et al. 2,875 citations
The rapid antidepressant response after ketamine administration in treatment-resistant depressed patients suggests a possible new approach for treating mood disorders compared to the weeks or months required for standard medications. However, the mechanisms underlying this action of ketamine [a glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptor antagonist] have not been identified. We observed...
The Hallucinogen N,N -Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) Is an Endogenous Sigma-1 Receptor Regulator
Science February 13, 2009 Dominique Fontanilla, Molly Johannessen, Abdol R. Hajipour et al. 528 citations
The sigma-1 receptor is widely distributed in the central nervous system and periphery. Originally mischaracterized as an opioid receptor, the sigma-1 receptor binds a vast number of synthetic compounds but does not bind opioid peptides; it is currently considered an orphan receptor. The sigma-1 receptor pharmacophore includes an alkylamine core, also found in the endogenous compound...
Consciousness and Anesthesia
Science November 7, 2008 M. Alkire, A. Hudetz, G. Tononi
When we are anesthetized, we expect consciousness to vanish. But does it always? Although anesthesia undoubtedly induces unresponsiveness and amnesia, the extent to which it causes unconsciousness is harder to establish. For instance, certain anesthetics act on areas of the brain's cortex near the midline and abolish behavioral responsiveness, but not necessarily consciousness. Unconsciousness...
Arguing for Embodied Consciousness
Science October 10, 2008 Harold Fromm
What Science Offers the Humanities . Integrating Body and Culture. By Edward Slingerland . Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008. 388 pp. $85, £45. ISBN 9780521877701. Paper, $24.99, £18.99. ISBN 9780521701518. The author argues that findings from the natural sciences, especially research on human cognition, are critical to progress in the humanities and studies of culture.
DEATHS
Science May 8, 2008
JUST CURIOUS. Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist whose discovery of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) fueled an era of psychedelic art and music, died of a heart attack on 29 April in Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.