Psilocybin is a naturally occurring classic psychedelic associated with widespread changes in brain function and promising therapeutic outcomes in several neuropsychiatric disorders. Complementing these findings, qualitative studies following psilocybin administration have revealed diverse and highly individual effects across multiple domains of subjective experience. However, little is known...
Brain and BehaviorOctober 2026Mina Hasanpour, Kousar Dadkhah Tehrani, Amir Sam Kianimoghadam et al.
The Mind Excessively Wandering Scale (MEWS) assesses excessive mind-wandering. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Persian 12-item MEWS (MEWS-12) among Iranian adolescents, focusing on factor structure, internal consistency, associations with external measures, known-groups validity, and gender measurement invariance. In this cross-sectional study, 506 adolescents aged 12-18...
BACKGROUND: In recent years, teacher well-being and fairness in assessment have emerged as critical issues in higher education, particularly in contexts of rising stress and burnout. This study employed a correlational research design to investigate the relationships among mindfulness, psychological distress, mental health, and assessment fairness among senior high school teachers in Ghana....
Brain and BehaviorAugust 30, 2026Waqar Husain, Achraf Ammar, Urwa‐Tul Wusqa et al.
BACKGROUND: Religious and spiritual practices are among the most ancient and universal human behaviors, yet their neurobiological substrates remain incompletely characterized. Neurotheology-the scientific study of the relationship between spiritual experience and brain function-has produced growing evidence that such practices generate measurable, systematic, and neuroplastic changes in brain...
Psychedelic and substance-assisted therapies are attracting renewed scientific, clinical, and public interest as potential interventions for mental health disorders, particularly treatment-resistant depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance use disorders. However, as the field moves from early efficacy trials toward clinical implementation, major questions remain regarding...
Expectations strongly shape participant experiences in clinical trials, contributing to placebo effects that complicate interpretation of outcomes. While quantitative tools exist to measure expectations, their subjective and multidimensional nature, especially for individuals with treatment-resistant depression (TRD), remains underexplored. This study aimed to explore the motivations and...
Brain and BehaviorJune 1, 2026T Rowe, T Hurzeler, Ellen Towers et al.1 citation
Psychedelics have received considerable attention due to their potential in treating psychiatric disorders. The "setting" during psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is recognized as playing a central role in the experience, during which music features prominently. Although music is theorized as directing and shaping psychedelic sessions, its precise contribution to acute experience and...
Peer Support Workers (PSWs) in mental health and substance use treatment draw on their lived experience (LE) to support clients through mutual understanding and trust. Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is emerging as a mental health and substance use treatment modality. As interest grows, understanding PSWs' perspectives on PAT is critical to inform safe and effective implementation, and the...
Brain and BehaviorMay 1, 2026Mauro Cozzolino, Marco Borgese, Giovanna Celia
BACKGROUND: University students face increasing levels of stress, anxiety, and self-efficacy, which may disrupt autonomic balance. While many mind-body interventions require sustained practice, growing evidence suggests that even a single session can yield immediate benefits. This randomized controlled trial compared the immediate and short-term effects of the brain wave modulation technique...
Brain and BehaviorMay 1, 2026Alessandro Bombaci, Alessandra Giordano, Ilaria Lavalle et al.
BACKGROUND: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the degeneration of upper and lower motor neurons, leading to muscle atrophy, weakness, and respiratory failure. Numerous studies evaluated the impact of diseases on dream content, and the dream content analysis may be considered an interesting tool in the study of the internalization of...
Psycholytic therapy, utilizing psychoactive compounds such as d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to enhance psychoanalytically oriented therapy, was once the most common form of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Despite its historical prominence, little attention has been given to the reasons behind its decline, and there is a lack of standardized guidance for new clinical trials. This review...
Brain and BehaviorApril 1, 2026Sharon Murphy, Elizabeth Stewart, Jacqueline Ruth. Winship et al.1 citation
PURPOSE: Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is becoming a clinically available treatment for patients with treatment-resistant conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in several countries. As PAT transitions from research settings into routine clinical practice, there is a growing need for coherent clinical frameworks and evidence-based guidelines to support its...
Background: Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) can cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs), which are characterized by neural circuit and behavioral dysfunction due to impaired brain development. At the neural and behavioral levels, PAE is associated with disrupted cortical synaptic transmission and lifelong impairments in learning and cognitive control. Despite the prevalence of FASDs...
Brain and BehaviorApril 1, 2026Livio Tarchi, Lorenzo Lasagni, Leonardo Ubaldi et al.
Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder marked by specific cognitive and clinical disturbances, for which neuroimaging biomarkers remain elusive. Novel theoretical and computational frameworks, such as integrated information decomposition, offer promising approaches to provide interpretable biomarkers for neuroimaging alterations in schizophrenia, potentially capturing disruptions...
Although commonly used in psychedelic-assisted therapy, the role of therapeutic touch remains loosely defined and ethically sensitive. Gaining insight into how participants experience and interpret touch during psychedelic sessions is essential for informing safe and effective clinical practice. Participants were sampled from a large randomized clinical trial of psilocybin-assisted therapy that...
Psychedelic- and substance-assisted therapies, including MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine, are gaining attention for conditions such as PTSD and depression, yet their development and implementation remain largely concentrated in high-income settings. This graphical abstract summarizes the central argument of the commentary: while these interventions may hold relevance for global mental health,...
Brain and BehaviorFebruary 1, 2026Burçin Ün, Zeki Akarsakarya, Özlem Yorulmaz Özü et al.
Previous studies have suggested that adenosinergic system in the central nervous system may play a role in both behavioral changes and the physiopathology induced by Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and this is thought to be mediated by adenosine A2A receptors (A2ARs). However, the contribution of the adenosinergic system to the anxiety-like behaviors in response to THC in mice is not well...
Background: Acute suicidality is an emergency psychiatric condition that requires urgent treatment. Traditional treatment approaches, such as antidepressant pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy, take weeks to achieve optimal effectiveness, hence exposing patients in imminent crisis to significant risk. Ketamine is a fast-acting N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist that has been...
Brain and Behavior2026Filipa Alves Da Silva, Rita Avelar, Bernardo Peixoto et al.
Depression affects around 280 million people worldwide, and about 30% of patients have treatment-resistant depression. Ketamine has significant scientific evidence supporting its use as an antidepressant, making it a promising approach for treatment-resistant cases. Combining ketamine with psychotherapy may enhance therapeutic response and support longer-lasting cognitive and behavioral change....
Preliminary evidence suggests that classic psychedelics may exert lasting positive effects on individuals' mood, cognition, and personality, but little is known about how these effects may differ across the lifespan. Emerging adulthood (18-29) is a critical developmental stage in which individuals transition from dependence on community institutions toward full independence. It is a time when...
This case, set within its medical and pharmacological context, provides a unique opportunity to study NDEs and their precipitating context. The reported transformations underscore the importance of recognizing NDEs for their possible long-term effects on patients and relevance to medical practice.
Brain and BehaviorSeptember 1, 2025Maliheh Fallah, Hamidreza Mohajerani, Abdullah Omidi et al.
Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is increasingly recognized as a behavioral addiction linked to deficits in executive functioning, emotion regulation, boredom susceptibility, and impaired time perception. Emerging therapies such as body awareness psychotherapy (BAP) aim to improve cognitive and emotional self-regulation through embodied mindfulness. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness...
Abstract Background : Military veterans are at risk of various mental health conditions, with profound implications for post‐deployment quality of life. Current treatment options encounter high dropout rates and non‐responsiveness, and overlook the importance of community building in veterans’ holistic recovery. Preliminary research suggests psychedelics offer therapeutic benefits for...
The phenomenology of psychedelic experiences has been a long-standing point of interest to researchers. However, internal experience has been relatively relegated, with much work done on the clinical outcomes of psychedelic therapies. Our reflexive thematic analysis revealed that structurally, people on fora write about their experiences sequentially, considering factors prior to (preparatory),...
Cytotoxic lesions of the corpus callosum (CLOCCs) are a rare clinicoradiologic syndrome, exceptionally rare in association with coronavirus disease (COVID-2019). This study aimed to investigate the neurological features of COVID-19-associated CLOCCs and gain insights into their underlying pathophysiology. A retrospective evaluation was conducted on patients with COVID-19-associated CLOCCs...