Addictive Behaviors
October 1, 2007
Sarah Bowen, Katie Witkiewitz, Tiara M Dillworth et al.
Previous studies have demonstrated that attempts to suppress thoughts about using substances may actually lead to increases in substance use. Vipassana, a mindfulness meditation practice, emphasizes acceptance, rather than suppression, of unwanted thoughts. A study by Bowen and colleagues examining the effects of a Vipassana course on substance use in an incarcerated population showed...
Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior
October 1, 2007
Jerrold C Winter, K C Rice, D J Amorosi et al.
73 citations
Although psilocybin has been trained in the rat as a discriminative stimulus, little is known of the pharmacological receptors essential for stimulus control. In the present investigation rats were trained with psilocybin and tests were then conducted employing a series of other hallucinogens and presumed antagonists. An intermediate degree of antagonism of psilocybin was observed following...
PLoS Biology
September 25, 2007
Antoine del Cul, Sylvain Baillet, Stanislas Dehaene
When a flashed stimulus is followed by a backward mask, subjects fail to perceive it unless the target-mask interval exceeds a threshold duration of about 50 ms. Models of conscious access postulate that this threshold is associated with the time needed to establish sustained activity in recurrent cortical loops, but the brain areas involved and their timing remain debated. We used high-density...
September 21, 2007
Jeff Buechner
The first systematic examination of Hilary Putnam's arguments against computational functionalism challenges each of Putnam's main arguments. With mind-brain identity theories no longer dominant in philosophy of mind in the late 1950s, scientific materialists turned to functionalism, the view that the identity of any mental state depends on its function in the cognitive system of which it is a...
Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology
September 15, 2007
Sara Garcia-Ratés, Jordi Camarasa, Elena Escubedo et al.
Previous work from our group indicated that alpha7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (alpha7 nAChR) potentially play a role in methamphetamine (METH) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) neurotoxicity. The aims of the present study were two-fold: (1) to demonstrate the interaction of METH and MDMA with homomeric alpha7 nAChR ([(3)H]methyllycaconitine binding) and other heteromeric...
Biological Psychiatry
September 15, 2007
Mauro Federici, Luca Sebastianelli, Silvia Natoli et al.
Although dopamine (DA) has been implicated in the psychostimulant properties of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), there is no detailed information on its modalities of action on single ventral midbrain dopaminergic neurons. We examined the actions of MDMA on intracellularly recorded dopaminergic neurons maintained in slices. At 1 micromol/L, MDMA depolarized and excited the cells; at 3...
Behavioural Pharmacology
September 2007
Young May Cha, Katherine H Jones, Cynthia M Kuhn et al.
Like other recreational drugs, cannabinoids may produce different effects in men and women. In this study we measured the effects of delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on spatial learning in two groups that are underrepresented in drug research--females and adolescents. In the first experiment, adolescent (postnatal day 30) and adult (postnatal day 70) rats of both sexes were treated...
Psychopharmacology
September 2007
Stephen A Varvel, Billy R Martin, Aron H Lichtman
Recent evidence has provided support for the incentive-sensitization model of addiction, where repeated stimulation of neural reward circuits leads to a long-lasting sensitization of mesolimbic dopaminergic activity. This phenomenon has been demonstrated with many drugs of abuse, most often by measuring progressively increased activating effects of drugs on locomotor activity, thought to...
The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology
August 2007
Matthew W Warren, Wenrong Zheng, Firas H Kobeissy et al.
Abuse of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or Ecstasy) and methamphetamine (Meth or Speed) is a growing international problem with an estimated 250 million users of psychoactive drugs worldwide. It is important to demonstrate and understand the mechanism of neurotoxicity so potential prevention and treatment therapies can be designed. In this study rat primary cerebrocortical neuron...
Chemistry & Biodiversity
August 2007
Franjo Grotenhermen
The acute side effects caused by cannabis use are mainly related to psyche and cognition, and to circulation. Euphoria, anxiety, changes in sensory perception, impairment of memory and psychomotor performance are common effects after a dose is taken that exceeds an individually variable threshold. Cannabis consumption may increase heart rate and change blood pressure, which may have serious...