Experimental Neurology
September 1, 2026
Javier Calleja‐conde, Víctor Echeverry‐alzate, Marina Sanz-Sancristóbal et al.
In a preclinical model of Parkinson's disease, the compound N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the main psychoactive ingredient in ayahuasca, reduced neuroinflammation and preserved neurons in the nigrostriatal pathway. Treated animals also showed improvements in behavior. These results suggest DMT may have disease-modifying potential for Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder marked by loss of dopaminergic neurons and chronic inflammation, for which current treatments only relieve symptoms.
Braz J Psychiatry
July 7, 2026
Alberto Souza Sá Filho, James Oluwagbamigbe Fajemiroye, Antonio Egidio Nardi et al.
The article argues that while ayahuasca has shown promise in early depression research, the field must move beyond initial enthusiasm to address methodological challenges and ethical considerations. It calls for rigorous, well-controlled studies to determine efficacy and safety, and emphasizes the need to understand the specific mechanisms of action. The authors suggest that future research should focus on long-term outcomes, potential risks, and the integration of ayahuasca into broader therapeutic contexts, rather than simply celebrating its potential.
Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics
July 1, 2026
Tijana Stojanovic, Kent W Nilsson, Robert Fredriksson et al.
The clinical trial landscape for ayahuasca and DMT expanded rapidly after 2020-2021, dominated by early-stage development. Most trials are phase I, primarily sponsored by academic or hospital institutions, and focus on DMT-only administration. Eligibility criteria are conservative, enrolling medically and psychiatrically healthy adults with extensive cardiovascular and psychiatric exclusions. Primary outcomes prioritize acute safety, physiological monitoring, and characterization of subjective altered-states, while disorder-specific symptom endpoints are less common. Publications from depression-focused trials provide preliminary evidence of potential clinical effects, but the field remains constrained by a limited number of indication-specific programs beyond depression.
Progress in Neuro-psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
July 1, 2026
Guilherme Lodetti, Rafael Mariano de Bitencourt, Antonio Inserra et al.
A single dose of Ayahuasca reduced relapse-like alcohol drinking in alcohol-dependent rats, with effects varying by sex and alcohol concentration. It also lessened anxiety- and depression-like behaviors caused by alcohol withdrawal, increased dopamine in the striatum of both male and female rats, and restored serotonin levels in the cortex primarily in males. Ayahuasca partially reversed alcohol-related drops in brain-derived neurotrophic factor and reduced markers of oxidative stress in the frontal cortex, hippocampus, and striatum. However, antioxidant enzyme activities were not consistently altered, and some neurochemical and oxidative stress measures showed only partial normalization. The findings suggest Ayahuasca modulates multiple neurobiological pathways disrupted by chronic alcohol exposure, with region- and sex-dependent effects.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
July 1, 2026
Schüller Thomas
DMT is the fourth classical psychedelic in a series and has five distinguishing features: oral inactivity without an MAO inhibitor; ultra-short duration (minutes) when smoked or injected; ayahuasca as a plant combination (DMT source plus β-carboline MAOI); endogenous occurrence in mammals; and the unique religious legal ruling Gonzales v. O Centro (2006). Chemically, DMT is a tryptamine (like psilocybin and LSD), contrasting with the phenethylamine mescaline. This bilingual full work provides a transdisciplinary scientific overview of DMT and ayahuasca across eight disciplines, with explicit labeling of levels of certainty (confirmed / probable / open).
Interações - cultura e comunidade
June 23, 2026
Leonardo Tondato Mello, Kemily Bakri Ottoni, Janaína Liz Aquino
The global expansion of ayahuasca carries both creative and destructive potential for mental health, depending on the historical and social context of Indigenous peoples' exclusion and marginalization since the colonial period. Ongoing studies of ayahuasca's therapeutic effects indicate that proper management and interdisciplinary collaboration between ancestral knowledge and Western psychology/psychiatry are essential. The article concludes that a fair and respectful exchange with Indigenous knowledge is necessary to avoid predatory appropriation.
June 23, 2026
Carlos Minuano
Benki Piyãko, an Ashaninka leader in the Brazilian state of Acre, warns that the Amazon rainforest, which he calls one of the world's largest pharmacies, is being destroyed. This statement highlights multiple threats to the Amazon and underscores a growing debate about ayahuasca, an Indigenous psychedelic beverage considered a forest medicine.
June 21, 2026
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
preprint
Ayahuasca use among ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews is adapted to Jewish contexts, with ceremonies modified to fit religious norms. Motivations for use are primarily therapeutic. Acute experiences include Jewish and Jewish mystical visionary content. Longer-term effects include strengthened belief, connection to Judaism, and changes in religious practice. Religious tensions arise from ayahuasca's perceived foreignness, concerns about idolatry, mixed-gender participation, and competing authority structures. Strategies to address these tensions include medicalization, making the set, setting, and experience religiously permissible ("koshering"), and framing ceremonies as liminal spaces. The findings highlight psychedelics' contextual flexibility and diffusion into understudied populations.
Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & pharmacotherapie
June 1, 2026
Francisco Madrid-Gambin, Pablo Mallaroni, Noemí Haro et al.
The psychedelic state induced by ayahuasca arises from coordinated, system-level interactions between peripheral metabolism and brain network dynamics, rather than isolated neurochemical events. In 20 experienced ceremonial users, the subjective dimensions of oceanic boundlessness, visionary restructuralization, and auditory alterations covaried with circulating DMT and β-carbolines, shifts in lipid, amino acid, and energy metabolism, and reconfiguration of dorsal attention and default mode network connectivity. Shared features across these experiences were most strongly linked to endocannabinoid-related N-acylethanolamines, acylglycerols, and ceramides, extending beyond canonical serotonergic models to downstream lipid-signaling and metabolic processes. The findings offer translational insight into metabolic pathways that may modulate brain function and subjective response.
Chaos Solitons & Fractals
May 30, 2026
Tales Ramos Monteiro Dos Santos, Draulio B Araujo, Helcio Felippe et al.
Psychedelic states can help researchers understand how the brain reorganizes at a large scale. In nine people scanned before and after taking ayahuasca, topological data analysis of resting-state fMRI connectivity showed a nominal decrease in persistent entropy of H2 features—a measure of higher-dimensional topological structure—that did not survive correction for multiple comparisons and was not reproduced with signed correlations. Exploratory analyses of signal complexity found descriptive but non-significant increases. These preliminary, hypothesis-generating results highlight persistent homology as a potential framework for studying psychedelic-related brain changes, but replication in larger placebo-controlled studies is needed.