Neuroscience Letters
July 1, 2026
Sara Salgues, Geoffrey Duran, Arnaud Fournel et al.
Experiences such as sensing a presence, feeling as if insects were crawling under the skin and related phenomena have been described in psychiatric, neurological, and toxicological contexts. However, they also occur frequently in the general population. Previous research suggests that stable physiological traits may predispose individuals to complex bodily hallucinations. The present...
Neuroscience Letters
May 23, 2025
Diane Joss, Gunes Sevinc, John W. Denninger et al.
1 citation
Meditation training has been shown to improve physical and mental health and promote neural plasticity, but more research is needed on the relationships between these effects. This study analyzed the Resting State Functional Connectivity (RSFC) of posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) among 94 chronically stressed but otherwise healthy adults randomized 1:1:1 to receive eight weeks of in-person...
Neuroscience Letters
November 20, 2024
Angeliki Metaxia Styla, Nikolaos Pitsikas
2 citations
Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a serious progressive neurodegenerative illness conducting to the decay of cognitive functions. A few drugs have been approved for the therapy of AD, including the acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) like donepezil. Their efficiency, however, is modest and their application is associated with toxicity. Recently, the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor...
Neuroscience Letters
August 10, 2024
Isis M. Ornelas, Beatriz de S. Carrilho, Matheus Antonio V. de C. Ventura et al.
3 citations
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is a synthetic psychedelic compound with potential therapeutic value for psychiatric disorders. This study aims to establish Caenorhabditis elegans as an in vivo model for examining LSD's effects on locomotor behavior. Our results demonstrate that LSD is absorbed by C. elegans and that the acute treatment reduces animal speed, similar to the role of endogenous...
Neuroscience Letters
June 21, 2024
Carlos M Contreras, Ana G Gutiérrez-García
4 citations
Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic that has been proposed to be a useful alternative in cases of a poor response to other treatments in patients with depression. Remarkably, beneficial clinical actions of ketamine are detected once its psychotropic actions disappear. Therefore, clinical actions may occur independently of dose. Most current studies focus on actions of ketamine on neurotrophic...
Neuroscience Letters
June 21, 2024
Yingbing Tu, Bin Xu
3 citations
Esketamine has been revealed to improve cognitive impairments under different conditions, while its function in Alzheimer's disease (AD) has not been well characterized. We expounded the effects and detailed mechanism of esketamine in triple transgenic AD (3xTg-AD) mice in the present study. The impaired spatial learning and memory retention of 3xTg-AD mice were ameliorated by esketamine,...
Neuroscience Letters
June 21, 2024
Barbara G Ferri, Cintia O De Novais, Viviana C T Rojas et al.
3 citations
Sepsis-associated encephalopathy, which manifests in severe cognitive and depressive symptoms, is directly linked to neuroinflammation. Our study investigates the efficacy of 25H-NBOMe, a phenethylamine, in alleviating these symptoms, potentially offering an innovative treatment for post-sepsis depression. Wistar rats, weighing between 250-300 g, were subjected to cecal ligation and puncture...
Neuroscience Letters
May 14, 2024
Daniele Cavaleri, Ilaria Riboldi, Cristina Crocamo et al.
13 citations
The antidepressant effects of ketamine and esketamine are well-documented. Nonetheless, most of the underlying molecular mechanisms have to be uncovered yet. In the last decade, metabolomics has emerged as a useful means to investigate the metabolic phenotype associated with depression as well as changes induced by antidepressant treatments. This mini-review aims at summarizing the main...
Neuroscience Letters
January 18, 2024
Hector Vargas-Perez, Fernando Minauro-Sanmiguel, Ryan Ting-A-Kee et al.
2 citations
According to the opponent-process theory of drug addiction, the intake of an addictive substance initiates two processes: a rapid primary process that results in the drug's rewarding effects, and a slower opponent process that leads to the aversive motivational state of drug aftereffects. This aversive state is integral in the desire, pursuit, and maintenance of drug use, potentially leading to...
Neuroscience Letters
September 25, 2022
Alaina M Jaster, Jason Younkin, Travis Cuddy et al.
53 citations
Psychedelics, also known as classical hallucinogens, affect processes related to perception, cognition and sensory processing mostly via the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor (5-HT2AR). This class of psychoactive substances, which includes lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, mescaline and the substituted amphetamine 1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodophenyl)-2-aminopropane (DOI), is receiving renewed...
Neuroscience Letters
November 1, 2021
Prisca R. Bauer, C. Sabourdy, Benoit Chatard et al.
PURPOSE Intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) offers a unique window on brain dynamics with excellent temporal and spatial resolution and is less prone to recording artefacts than surface EEG. This study used a within-subject design to explore the feasibility to compare iEEG data during mind wandering, mindfulness meditation and hypnosis. RESULTS Three patients who had iEEG for clinical...
Neuroscience Letters
September 15, 2021
A. Hajizadeh Moghaddam, Khadijeh Maboudi, Bita Bavaghar et al.
Curcumin as an antioxidant natural herb has shown numerous pharmacological effects. However, the poor bioavailability of curcumin is a significant pharmacological barrier for its antioxidant activities. The present study was conducted to develop curcumin-loaded nanophytosome (CNP) and explore their therapeutic potential in a ketamine (KET)-induced schizophrenia (SCZ) model. The mice in our...
Neuroscience Letters
April 23, 2018
Yan Zhou, Rachel S Crowley, Thomas E Prisinzano et al.
Alcohol relapse plays a major role in alcohol dependence and is an important focus for the treatment of alcoholism. The alcohol deprivation effect (ADE) is a widely used paradigm in rodents to model the relapse episodes that occur in human alcoholics. Mesyl Salvinorin B (MSB) is a potent and selective kappa opioid receptor (KOP-r) full agonist, with fewer side effects (e.g., sedation or...
Neuroscience Letters
June 9, 2017
Ji-Ho Ryu, Pil-Jong Kim, Hong-Gee Kim et al.
Although functional connectivity has received considerable attention in the study of consciousness, few studies have investigated functional connectivity limited to the sedated state where consciousness is maintained but impaired. The aim of the present study was to investigate changes in functional connectivity of the parietal-frontal network resulting from nitrous oxide-induced sedation, and...
Neuroscience Letters
March 11, 2016
Junling Gao, Jicong Fan, B. W. Wu et al.
The activities of the brain and the heart are dynamic, chaotic, and possibly intrinsically coordinated. This study aims to investigate the effect of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program on the chaoticity of electronic activities of the brain and the heart, and to explore their potential correlation. Electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) were recorded at the...
Neuroscience Letters
March 17, 2015
Mei-Kei Leung, Chetwyn C H Chan, Jing Yin et al.
Previous studies have demonstrated that meditation is associated with neuroplastic changes in the brain regions including amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and temporal-parietal junction. Extended from these previous works, this study examined the functional connectivity of the amygdala in meditation experts during affective processing and observed that these experts had significantly...
Neuroscience Letters
November 27, 2013
Rebecca Erwin Wells, Gloria Y Yeh, Catherine E. Kerr et al.
Those with high baseline stress levels are more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD). While meditation may reduce stress and alter the hippocampus and default mode network (DMN), little is known about its impact in these populations. Our objective was to conduct a "proof of concept" trial to determine whether Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)...
Neuroscience Letters
January 16, 2013
José L. Moreno, Terrell Holloway, Vinayak Rayannavar et al.
44 citations
Hallucinogenic drugs, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline and psilocybin, alter perception and cognitive processes. All hallucinogenic drugs have in common a high affinity for the serotonin 5-HT(2A) receptor. Metabotropic glutamate 2/3 (mGlu2/3) receptor ligands show efficacy in modulating the cellular and behavioral responses induced by hallucinogenic drugs. Here, we explored...
Neuroscience Letters
October 28, 2010
Joon Hwan Jang, Wi Hoon Jung, Do‐hyung Kang et al.
267 citations
Areas associated with the default mode network (DMN) are substantially similar to those associated with meditation practice. However, no studies on DMN connectivity during resting states have been conducted on meditation practitioners. It was hypothesized that meditators would show heightened functional connectivity in areas of cortical midline activity. Thirty-five meditation practitioners and...
Neuroscience Letters
December 3, 2008
Pieter Beerepoot, Vincent M Lam, Alice Luu et al.
Locomotor sensitization induced by the dopamine agonist quinpirole can be potentiated by co-treatment with the synthetic kappa opioid agonist U69593. The identification of salvinorin A, an active component of the psychotropic sage Salvia divinorum, as a structurally different agonist of kappa-opioid receptors raised the question of whether this compound would similarly potentiate sensitization...
Neuroscience Letters
August 15, 2008
Mario Beauregard, Vincent Paquette
105 citations
Mystical experiences relate to a fundamental dimension of human existence. These experiences, which are characterized by a sense of union with God, are commonly reported across all cultures. To date, no electroencephalography (EEG) study has been conducted to identify the neuroelectrical correlates of such experiences. The main objective of this study was to measure EEG spectral power and...
Neuroscience Letters
February 13, 2008
Jiřı́ Wackermann, Marc Wittmann, Felix Hasler et al.
95 citations
Action of a hallucinogenic substance, psilocybin, on internal time representation was investigated in two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies: Experiment 1 with 12 subjects and graded doses, and Experiment 2 with 9 subjects and a very low dose. The task consisted in repeated reproductions of time intervals in the range from 1.5 to 5s. The effects were assessed by parameter kappa of the...
Neuroscience Letters
June 21, 2007
Britta K. Hölzel, Ulrich Ott, Hannes Hempel et al.
This study investigated differences in brain activation during meditation between meditators and non-meditators. Fifteen Vipassana meditators (mean practice: 7.9 years, 2h daily) and fifteen non-meditators, matched for sex, age, education, and handedness, participated in a block-design fMRI study that included mindfulness of breathing and mental arithmetic conditions. For the meditation...
Neuroscience Letters
July 27, 2006
Mario Beauregard, Vincent Paquette
338 citations
The main goal of this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was to identify the neural correlates of a mystical experience. The brain activity of Carmelite nuns was measured while they were subjectively in a state of union with God. This state was associated with significant loci of activation in the right medial orbitofrontal cortex, right middle temporal cortex, right inferior...
Neuroscience Letters
January 9, 2006
Nadine Buck, Sebat Cali, Joachim Behr
The subiculum plays a key role in processing neuronal information from the hippocampus to different cortical and subcortical brain regions. The subicular projections to the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex have received increasing attention, as alterations of their activity seem to be involved in schizophrenia. Phencyclidine and other non-competitive antagonists of NMDA receptors...