The purpose of this study was to compare mental health, death anxiety and defense mechanisms in addicted and nonaddicted people. The research method is descriptive of comparative causal type. The statistical population of the study consisted of all addicts and nonaddicted people in Zahedan city. The sample consisted of 200 people (100 addicted men and 100 non-addicted men) who were volunteers...
The lifetime prevalence of addiction to cannabis (marijuana or cannabinoids) is among the highest of that of all illicit drugs in developed countries, and no effective treatment for cannabis addiction is currently available. Previous studies in our research group suggested that astrocyte-mediated long-term depression (LTD) in ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons plays a pivotal role in...
The weighted Phase Lag Index (wPLI) and the weighted Symbolic Mutual Information (wSMI) represent two robust and widely used methods for MEG/EEG functional connectivity estimation. Interestingly, both methods have been shown to detect relative alterations of brain functional connectivity in conditions associated with changes in the level of consciousness, such as following severe brain injury...
In major depression, remission rate in response to monoaminergic antidepressant is around 50%. The lack of strong synergies between classical antidepressants and psychotherapy may be due to the molecular effects of classical antidepressants. They modulate synapses but they do not substantially influence synaptogenesis. They also increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). However, for...
ABSTRACT The effects of cannabis reported by users range from experiences of euphoria and anxiolytic effects to paranoia, anxiety, and increased risk of depression. Attempts to reconcile the apparent contradictions in user response have not been conclusive. Here, we utilized selectively-bred stress-resilient socially dominant (Dom) and stress-sensitive socially submissive (Sub) mice to...
Memories are not frozen in the past. Instead, they can be dynamically combined to allow individuals to adapt to the present or even imagine the future. This recombination, called event construction, also means that it might be possible to improve memory through specific interventions such as episodic specificity induction (ESI). ESI provides brief training in recollecting the details of a past...
While physicalism requires only that a conscious state depends entirely on an underlying physical state, it is often assumed that consciousness is algorithmic and that conscious states can be copied, such as by copying or digitizing the human brain. In an effort to further elucidate the physical nature of consciousness, I challenge these assumptions and attempt to prove the Single Stream of...
Objective: The purpose of the present study was to obtain patient information across a wide geography about medical history, drug use, symptoms, and treatments of individuals diagnosed with hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD). Methods: The study was an internet survey that yielded 26 HPPD patients from North America (81%), Europe (12%), and South America (almost 8%),...
Ayahuasca is a botanical hallucinogenic preparation traditionally used for ritual and therapeutic purposes by native populations of the Northwestern Amazon. In the last decades, ayahuasca use has spread to Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa, and interest in the possible therapeutic uses of ayahuasca for treating anxiety and mood disorder and substance-use disorders has increased both...
Abstract: Our great ape cousins, and very likely the last common ancestor of the human and pan lineage, depend very largely on their own intrinsic capacities not just for material resources but also for their informational resources. Chimps and bonobos are capable of social learning, and very likely, in their foraging and their communicative practices, they do learn from their parents and...