Ayahuasca is a beverage used in religious rituals of indigenous and nonindigenous groups, and its therapeutic potential has been investigated. Ayahuasca is obtained by decoction of the Banisteriopsis caapi that contains β‐carbolines (harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine) plus Psychotria viridis that contains N , N ‐dimethyltryptamine. Although plants used in folk medicine are recognized as...
OBJECTIVE: The incidence rate of major depression in adolescents reaches approximately 14%. This disorder is usually recurrent, without remission of symptoms even after pharmacological treatment, and persists throughout adult life. Since the effects of antidepressants take approximately 2 weeks to begin, new pharmacological therapies are under continuous exploration. Recent evidence suggests...
The international distribution and commodification of ayahuasca has created virtual communicative realms in the Internet in which members intensively exchange personal narratives, advertisements, and beliefs about ayahuasca and its reputed native background. Common consumption standards and beliefs about ayahuasca have developed among western ayahuasca drinkers who are often only loosely...
BackgroundResearch suggests that mindfulness-based interventions may improve mindfulness-related capacities (e.g., decentering, non-judging, and non-reacting) and emotion regulation. Previously, our group reported that ayahuasca could be a potential analogue of mindfulness practice. The main aim of the current study was to examine the effects of ayahuasca on emotional regulation and...
Utilizando algumas das principais práticas constitutivas do método etnográfico empreendi uma investigação a respeito do potencial psicoterápico do uso da Ayahuasca, especificamente no contexto de rituais neoxamânicos. Neste relato apresento as principais etapas da pesquisa, destacando algumas considerações a respeito de duas visitas a campo, nas quais realizei o trabalho de observação...
Open problems abound in the theory of complex networks, which has found successful application to diverse fields of science. With the aim of further advancing the understanding of the brain's functional connectivity, we propose to evaluate a network metric which we term the geodesic entropy. This entropy, in a way that can be made precise, quantifies the Shannon entropy of the distance...
This research is an ethnography of the brewing ritual of the beverage known as ayahuasca performed by a group called Irmandade Beneficente Natureza Divina, which is inserted in a wider process of transformations of the urban use of this substance in the last decades.Using an extended set of photographs taken in the feitio, the name given to the decoction making process, I discuss how the...
This article focuses on the therapeutic potential ascribed to ayahuasca by users in the Czech Republic. Following an online survey, the fieldwork among users of ayahuasca was carried out from November 2015 to December 2016. The research sample consisted of 46 persons (23 women and 23 men), who took part at least once in some type of ayahuasca ritual and/or were the facilitators of the ayahuasca...
Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew traditionally used in shamanistic and vegetalistic rituals and has recently received lot of attention due to potential cognitive benefits. Ayahuasca effects are caused by the synergistic interaction of β-carbolines (harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroarmine) contained in Banisteriopsis caapi stalks combined with the N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) from Psychotria...
Objectif L’ayahuasca est un breuvage psychedelique originaire du bassin amazonien et utilise dans des rites chamaniques. Il consiste en l’ingestion successive de 2 decoctions vegetales, l’une ayant un effet inhibiteur de la monoamine oxydase (IMAO), l’autre contenant de la dimethyltryptamine (DMT) responsable des effets hallucinogenes. Son utilisation en Europe est limitee par la reglementation...