The recognition of collective optimal experience remains structurally unresolved in psychology. Existing frameworks-from group flow to collective effervescence-have extended optimal experience to the collective level, yet they have generally treated individual reports as the primary endpoint for determining whether such experience has occurred, leaving unresolved how collective recognition...
Psychedelics are gaining attention for their potential as therapeutic adjuncts for the treatment of psychological disorders. Additionally, the recreational use of these substances has been rising for the past years. In the context of a comprehensive analysis of potential harms induced by these substances, concerns regarding the cognitive and neuropsychological impact of their use remain. This...
Synthetic cannabinoids, particularly 5F-MDMB-PICA, have emerged as potent psychoactive substances, exhibiting a binding affinity to the CB1 receptor approximately 380 times greater than that of Δ9-THC, the principal psychoactive compound in cannabis. Their widespread abuse has been associated with severe intoxication and fatalities globally. This study aimed to investigate the cytotoxic effects...
Prolonged exposure (PE) therapy is effective for PTSD, yet dropout and partial response remain concerning. Preclinical and human studies suggest Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) enhances fear extinction and recall through brain cannabinoid receptor activation in fear processing. Examine whether synthetic THC (dronabinol) augments PE effectiveness. Double-blind, placebo-controlled, trial with...
Mystical dynamics-the notion that mystical oneness may unfold involving ego disintegration, renewal, and luminous light-has been discussed anecdotally by psychedelic researchers and therapists but has not yet been empirically examined in controlled settings. This study investigated the occurrence and dose-dependency of mystical dynamics in healthy participants after administration of...
Biological psychiatry faces a significant epistemic challenge in identifying valid objects for mechanistic research. Both diagnostic constructs and individual symptoms are abstract symbols defined circularly within a closed hermeneutic system, creating a symbol grounding problem that hinders the discovery of biophysical substrates (biomarkers). I argue that progress requires an epistemological...
Ketamine (KET) addiction has already been a serious problem all over the world, which could induce neurological and psychological harm. Levo-tetrahydropalmatine (l-THP), a major alkaloid extracted from the Chinese medicinal plants Corydalis and Stephania, has been shown to attenuate ketamine (KET) induced conditioned place preference (CPP) in rats. Nevertheless, the precise mechanism remains...
Empathy is a core neurobiological capacity that enables humans to perceive, understand, and respond to others' experiences, yet its deliberate modulation as a therapeutic target is still in its early stages of scientific development. This manuscript presents a hybrid narrative-scoping review synthesizing evidence across pharmacological, neurostimulation, and behavioral approaches aimed at...
Research on animal self-awareness has long been organized around the mirror test and related self-recognition paradigms, encouraging a binary framing of whether a given species does or does not possess self-awareness. However, accumulating evidence suggests that animal self-representation cannot be reduced to a single experimental criterion, sensory modality, or linear evolutionary scale. This...
Creativity in human societies may be sustained not by isolated minds but by embodied, collective intelligence. Using music as a tractable model system, this paper reviews evidence that creativity depends on the dynamic tuning of uncertainty: moderate, time-varying surprise-often accompanied by interoceptive bodily sensations-can promote exploration, while interpersonal synchrony and social...