Psychopharmacology
March 1, 2026
Patricia Di Ciano, Sampson Zhao, Pamela Kaduri et al.
2 citations
Smoked cannabis is known to have effects on cognitive function. The use of edibles is on the rise yet there are few studies of the effects of edibles on cognitive function. Further, most studies of cannabis used fixed laboratory doses which may not capture some of the nuances of more naturalistic doses. Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the psychoactive component of cannabis yet the...
Psychopharmacology
March 1, 2026
Taren Mieran, Andrew Hill, Mark S Horswill et al.
Medicinal cannabis use is increasing worldwide, yet its impacts on driving safety in frequent users are not clearly understood. A more comprehensive understanding of the effects of THC on driving behaviour in frequent users is needed to guide drug driving policy and evidence-based advice for medicinal cannabis consumers. This study investigated the acute effects of orally ingested THC oil on...
Psychopharmacology
February 20, 2026
Monica S Carbajal, Rebecca C Crenshaw, Victoria E Williams et al.
Cannabis use during 2021pregnancy is common as many pregnant women consider cannabis as a safe way to alleviate symptoms associated with pregnancy because it is "natural". However, clinical evidence links perinatal cannabis exposure to externalizing behavior in offspring. In preclinical research, most studies focus on exposure to the psychoactive constituent of cannabis,...
Psychopharmacology
February 7, 2026
Rebecca J Simpson, Mario F Juruena
1 citation
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a common and debilitating condition. Current treatments fail to provide adequate relief in roughly one-third of individuals, resulting in treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Ketamine has emerged as a promising intervention for TRD, offering rapid and sustained antidepressant effects. However, benefits often require maintenance dosing, and long-term outcomes...
Psychopharmacology
February 2, 2026
Benjamin Anderson, Andrew Winokur, Grace J Chan
1 citation
Major Depressive Disorder is a common and disabling psychiatric illness whose pharmacological treatment options have historically been characterized by relatively low response rates. "Treatment-resistant depression" has emerged to describe patients whose depressive symptoms fail to respond to multiple courses of oral antidepressant medications. In 2019, the FDA approved intranasal esketamine as...
Psychopharmacology
February 1, 2026
Ana Deutsch, Connor J Haggarty, Gavin N Petrie et al.
1 citation
Stimulant drugs such as methamphetamine (MA) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) can impact neurobiological systems implicated in stress, reward processing, and drug use. Although recent preclinical evidence implicates the endocannabinoid (eCB) system in these processes, little is known about the acute effects of stimulants on eCB levels in humans. The aim of the present study was to...
Psychopharmacology
February 1, 2026
Savannah H M Lightfoot, Andrei S Nastase, Gabriela Costa Lenz Cesar et al.
Current treatment options for PTSD have unreliable efficacy, with many individuals unable to achieve complete remission. Cannabis and cannabinoids that act through the endogenous cannabinoid (endocannabinoid) system to help promote trauma recovery by means of enhanced extinction learning are potential therapeutic, pharmacological candidates. Using a preclinical model of translationally-relevant...
Psychopharmacology
February 1, 2026
Nicole L Zabik, Allesandra Iadipaolo, Craig A Peters et al.
Prior work from our lab and others demonstrates that the endocannabinoid system is a promising avenue for improving fear memory deficits in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Specifically, 7.5 mg of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) decreases fear responding in healthy adults and increases prefrontal cortex activation during extinction learning and fear renewal in adults with PTSD. The...
Psychopharmacology
December 13, 2025
David Greguš, Jaroslav Hlinka, Filip Tylš et al.
Individual variability in psilocybin response is a major challenge for psychedelic-assisted therapy, with structural brain features potentially serving as predictive biomarkers. (Lewis et al. Biomedicines 8(2):34 2020) reported that rostral anterior cingulate cortex thickness predicted emotional experiences under psilocybin, suggesting cortical morphometry as a marker of psychedelic...
Psychopharmacology
December 12, 2025
Ilenia Salsano, Giorgia Picci, Nathan M Petro et al.
Cannabis is one of the most widely used psychoactive drugs in the United States, yet its long-term effects on brain function remain poorly understood. Prior resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) studies have yielded inconsistent findings, likely due to variability in cannabis use thresholds, a predominant focus on younger populations, and region-of-interest (ROI)-based approaches limited...
Psychopharmacology
December 2025
Danielle McCartney, Jordan Levoux, Rebecca Gordon et al.
RATIONALE: Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal intoxicant in cannabis, is a highly lipophilic substance that is readily stored in fat. Preclinical research suggests that fat-stored THC can be released into circulation under lipolytic conditions, such as stress. However, compelling evidence of this phenomenon is lacking in humans. OBJECTIVES: Here, we investigated the effects of acute...
Psychopharmacology
November 28, 2025
Elifrances Galdino De Oliveira, Mayara Victória De Souza Barbosa, Diógenes Afonso De Lima et al.
Relevant to the study of neurodevelopmental disorders, maternal immune activation (MIA) models reproduce the high incidence of anxiety disorders and molecular alterations in the cerebellum reported in patients with schizophrenia and autism. In parallel, ketamine, a fast-acting antidepressant, has shown beneficial effects in psychiatric disorders with immune-related components. To investigate...
Psychopharmacology
November 15, 2025
Michael H. Baumann, Grant C. Glatfelter, Sara E Walton et al.
1 citation
There is growing interest in the therapeutic utility of psychedelic compounds that act as serotonin-2 A receptor (5-HT2A) agonists. N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a 5-HT2A agonist that produces intense and short-lived psychedelic subjective effects, but the compound requires non-oral routes of administration that bypass gastrointestinal metabolism. Intranasal (IN) delivery of DMT represents...
Psychopharmacology
November 15, 2025
Elisabetta Ciccocioppo, Sara Massetti, Marcus W. Meinhardt et al.
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) represents a significant medical challenge, with available therapeutic approaches having limited efficacy. Emerging data suggest that psychedelic compounds could represent an alternative treatment for AUD. Among this class of molecules, ketamine, a dissociative psychedelic, shows promising properties. It reduces alcohol drinking in rodents and in humans it is used to...
Psychopharmacology
November 10, 2025
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
These findings provide preliminary evidence that while ayahuasca may alter how humans interact with the theme of death on conceptual and affective levels of cognitive processing, on automatic, perceptual unconscious levels of self-specific processing, death-denial processes appear to remain intact.
Psychopharmacology
November 5, 2025
Milad Soltanzadeh, Wang Zheng, Shona G. Allohverdi et al.
1 citation
RationaleKetamine and psilocybin have demonstrated therapeutic potential for mental disorders, including major depressive disorder, yet they engage distinct mechanisms of action. Ketamine, a dissociative hallucinogen, acts by blocking N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDAR), whereas psilocybin primarily targets serotonin receptors. These divergent mechanisms are reflected in their...
Psychopharmacology
November 1, 2025
Marta De Felice, Hanna J Szkudlarek, Matthew J Jones et al.
RATIONALE: Chronic cannabis during adolescence is associated with long-lasting pathological outcomes, and these effects can be remarkably different between the sexes. Preclinical studies in rodents demonstrated that sustained exposure to Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), induces sex-specific pathophysiological outcomes. Thus, while males exhibit higher vulnerability to schizophrenia-like...
Psychopharmacology
October 31, 2025
Vítor Bruno, Lídia Emmanuela Wiazowski Spelta, Matheus Lujan Pereira et al.
Ayahuasca is a brew containing the psychedelic compound N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and β-carbolines, traditionally consumed in indigenous rituals. Recent studies suggest its potential to reduce depression and anxiety and as an alternative for treating ethanol and tobacco use disorders. However, research on its impact on cocaine use disorder remains limited. To analyze the rewarding effects of...
Psychopharmacology
October 27, 2025
Nina Gregoire, Ethan Klukas, Kimberley Kaseweter et al.
Ketamine-assisted therapy is emerging as a fast-acting intervention for treatment-resistant depression and anxiety. However, individual response to treatment varies, and little is known about how personality traits and trauma history influence outcomes. This study investigated whether distinct personality profiles emerge in a real-world sample of patients undergoing ketamine therapy and...
Psychopharmacology
October 27, 2025
David A Bender, Sandeep M. Nayak, Joshua S. Siegel et al.
Psychedelic treatments are considered to involve unique treatment challenges relative to other psychiatric interventions, though these are typically not explored in detail within clinical trial reports. To determine the types of challenges that providers encounter while administering psychedelic drugs in research settings and to assess provider opinions on safeguards that may be pursued to...
Psychopharmacology
October 20, 2025
Alicja Anna Binkowska, Anna Kaszyńska, Maciej Kamiński et al.
Cannabis is often consumed in polysubstance contexts, yet research comparing its isolated use to polydrug use is limited. Such comparisons are essential for understanding substance-specific versus interactive effects on brain activity. This study investigates how cannabis-only and polydrug use relate to alterations in resting-state EEG functional connectivity, using the Directed Transfer...
Psychopharmacology
October 11, 2025
Michelle St Pierre, Elena Argento, Jordyn Cates et al.
Repeated self-administration of small doses of psychedelics, known as microdosing, has been associated with perceived improvements in psychological functioning. However, few studies have examined effects at the daily level. Drawing on data from a naturalistic, prospective, international survey of adults who microdose (N = 1435), we assessed self-reported within-person changes between...
Psychopharmacology
October 2025
Tanya Capolicchio, Giovanni Hernandez, Sammy Shun Wai Shi et al.
The increasing exposure to delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in youth sparks concerns about disruption of ongoing neurodevelopment. During adolescence, dopamine axons continue to grow from the striatum to the prefrontal cortex, promoting the refinement of inhibitory control. This process is coordinated by the Netrin-1 receptor, DCC, which is regulated by microRNA miR-218. In addition,...
Psychopharmacology
August 11, 2025
Jussi Jylkkä, Aila Mustamo
1 citation
RATIONALE: Anecdotal evidence suggests that psychedelic researchers often have personal experiences with psychedelic substances. While such experiences may benefit research, concerns have been raised about potential biases and "excessive enthusiasm." However, the prevalence of personal experiences, their perceived relevance, and their association with opinions about psychedelics remain...
Psychopharmacology
August 1, 2025
Leah M Salinsky, Christina R Merritt, Erik J. Garcia et al.
8 citations
Overdose fatalities involving cocaine continue to rise with over 5.3 million cocaine users reported in the United States in 2022. The abuse liability of cocaine is reliant upon inhibition of dopamine (DA) reuptake and consequent increase in DA efflux in meso-corticolimbic circuitry that controls reward and motivation. Cocaine also increases serotonin (5-HT) efflux which is integral in cocaine...