Psychedelics have emerged as powerful modulators of neural plasticity, yet whether the atypical psychedelic ibogaine can enhance plasticity remains poorly understood. Here, we investigated whether a single administration of ibogaine can reinstate juvenile-like experience-dependent plasticity in the adult mouse visual cortex, a canonical model for studying neuroplasticity. Adult mice were...
BACKGROUND: Neuroinflammation is a hallmark of numerous neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Psychedelics have garnered recent attention for their anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects. However, it remains unknown whether they can prophylactically prime immune pathways to prevent subsequent neuroinflammatory responses, and whether such effects depend on serotonin 5-HT2A...
To evaluate the efficacy of short-term spinal cord stimulation (stSCS) in promoting tracheal decannulation among patients with brain injury-induced disorders of consciousness(DoC). A retrospective cohort study was conducted on 81 tracheotomized brain injury patients with DoC treated at Ganzhou People's Hospital between June 2021 and June 2022.Patients were divided into two groups: the stSCS...
Defining "dance" is challenging, because many distinct classes of human movement may be considered dance in a broad sense. Although the most obvious category is rhythmic dancing to a musical beat, other categories of expressive movement such as dance improvisation, pantomime, tai chi, or Japanese butoh suggest that a more inclusive conception of human dance is needed. Here we propose that a...
BMC NeuroscienceOctober 8, 2024Seong-Jin Yu, Kuo-Jen Wu, Yu-Syuan Wang et al.8 citations
Psilocybin is a psychedelic 5HT2A receptor agonist found in "magic mushrooms". Recent studies have indicated that 5HT2A agonists, such as dimethyltryptamine, given before middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo), improve staircase behavior, increased BDNF expression, and reduce brain infarction in stroke rats. The objective of this study is to determine the protective effect of psilocybin in...
Microdosing psychedelics is a phenomenon with claimed cognitive benefits that are relatively untested clinically. Pre-clinically, psychedelics have demonstrated enhancing effects on neuroplasticity, which cannot be measured directly in humans, but may be indexed by non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) paradigms. This study used a visual long-term potentiation (LTP) EEG paradigm to test the...
Sahaja Yoga Meditation draws on many religious traditions and uses a variety of techniques including Christian prayer to reach a state known as thoughtless awareness, or mental silence. While there are many studies on the neural correlates of meditation, few studies have focused on the neural correlates of praying. Thus, the aim of our research was to study the neural activity associated with...
BACKGROUND: High-quality evidence is still required to affirm the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) in craving reduction. MBIs may be particularly appropriate for this purpose given the neurobiological mechanisms of addiction with automatic behavior in response to the negative affect. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we aimed to study the efficacy of MBIs in craving...
When it comes to studying neural plasticity and psychedelics, the numerous and diverse neuroscientific fields converging on the topic provide unique insight into a complex picture. This editorial will describe the major ways in which the known effects of psychedelics on plasticity are being studied. We lay out strengths of different techniques and the major gaps and room for future research,...
Background: The functional connectivity of the default mode network (DMN) decreases in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) as well as in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Altered functional connectivity of the DMN is associated with cognitive impairment. T2DM is a known cause of cognitive dysfunction and dementia in the elderly, and studies have established that T2DM is a risk...
BACKGROUND: Better treatments for schizophrenia are urgently needed. The therapeutic use of the nitric oxide (NO)-donor sodium nitroprusside (SNP) in patients with schizophrenia has shown promising results. The role of NO in schizophrenia is still unclear, and NO modulation is unexplored in ketamine (KET) animal models to date. In the present study, we compared the behavioral effects of pre-...
Figure 1 (a) Model architecture for a single site (adapted from [1]).(b) Model estimated (in red) and experimental (in blue) spectra for a sample channel and subject.(c) Topographic map of the intrathalamic gain parameter before and after training.Reduction in intrathalamic gain has been linked to increase in alertness [2].Thus, the model not only fits experimental data but also provides a...
Repeated intermittent MDMA administration induces neuroadaptive changes in gene-transcript expressions of glutamatergic NMDA and AMPA receptor subunits, metabotropic receptors and transporters in regions of the brain regulating reward-related associative learning, cognition, and memory and neuro-endocrine functions.
BackgroundThe anesthetic drug ketamine (KT) has been reported to be an abused drug and fatal cases have been observed in polydrug users. In the present study, considering the possibility of KT-enhanced toxic effects of other drugs, and KT-induced promotion of an overdose without making the subject aware of the danger due to the attenuation of several painful subjective symptoms, the...
BACKGROUND: Consciousness poses two main problems. The first is understanding the conditions that determine to what extent a system has conscious experience. For instance, why is our consciousness generated by certain parts of our brain, such as the thalamocortical system, and not by other parts, such as the cerebellum? And why are we conscious during wakefulness and much less so during...