Don’t be afraid, try to meditate- potential effects on neural activity and connectivity of psilocybin-assisted mindfulness-based intervention for social anxiety disorder: A systematic review

Background: Current first-line treatment for social anxiety disorder (SAD), one of the most prevalent anxiety disorders, is limited in its efficacy. Hence, novel treatment approaches are urgently needed. The current review suggests a combination of meditation-based interventions and the administration of a psychedelic as a future alternative treatment approach. While both separate treatments show promise in the treatment of (other) clinical conditions, their combination has not yet been investigated in the treatment of psychopathologies.

Aim: With a systematic literature review, we aim to identify the potential mechanisms by which combined psilocybin and mindfulness treatment could adjust anomalous neural activity underlying SAD and exert therapeutic effects.

Results: Thirty experimental studies investigating the neural effects of meditation or psilocybin treatment in healthy and patient samples were included. Findings suggest that psilocybin-assisted meditation interventions might change cognitive processes like biased attention to threat linked to SAD by modulating connectivity of the salience network, balancing the activity and connectivity of cortical-midline structures, and increasing frontoparietal control over amygdala reactivity.

Conclusions: Future studies should investigate whether psilocybin-assisted mindfulness-based intervention can provide therapeutic benefits to SAD patients who are do not remit following conventional therapy.