In a previous article (Thalbourne & Delin, 1994), evidence was presented that there exists a common thread underlying creative personality, mystical experience, psychopathology (both schizotypal and manic-depressive), and belief in the paranor- mal. This common factor was named rransliminality and was tentatively defined as a largely involuntary susceptibility to, and awareness of, large...
Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR) are diverse members of the neurotransmitter-gated ion channel superfamily and play critical roles in chemical signaling throughout the nervous system. The present study establishes the acute functional effects of bupropion, phencyclidine, and ibogaine on two human nAChR subtypes. Function of muscle-type nAChR (alpha1 beta gamma delta) in TE671/RD cells...
The inability to cope successfully with the enormous stress of medical education may lead to a cascade of consequences at both a personal and professional level. The present study examined the short-term effects of an 8-week meditation-based stress reduction intervention on premedical and medical students using a well-controlled statistical design. Findings indicate that participation in the...
(1998). Editors' Introduction: Hallucinogens at the Turn of the Century. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs: Vol. 30, Therapeutic Ue of Hallucinogens, pp. 315-319.
To test that REM sleep and/or dreaming aid in the overnight regulation of negative mood, 60 student subjects, selected to have no current or past episodes of depression, were tested with the Profile of Mood States (POMS) before and after two nights of laboratory sleep. There was a significant overnight effect of sleep on the Depression scale (Dep) both on a sleep-through night and a night of...
Two studies were conducted to assess, in vivo, potential anti-nicotinic effects of the iboga alkaloid ibogaine and its synthetic congener 18-methoxycoronaridine (18-MC). As previously demonstrated for ibogaine, using microdialysis, pretreatment (19h beforehand) with 18-MC (40 mg/kg, i.p.) significantly attenuated nicotine-induced dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens of awake and freely...
The present study investigated dream recall frequency and dream content of patients with insomnia in comparison to healthy controls. Patients’ dream recall frequency was elevated, due mainly to their heightened frequency of nocturnal awakenings. Dream content seems to reflect waking life stressors found in these patients, i.e. dream emotions were more negative and dreams were characterized by...
Synaptopathies (Fall, 2022) Synaptic neurotransmission lies at the heart of nervous system's functioning. Clearly then, alterations in synaptic signal transduction can lead to a variety of neural disorders. Perhaps the most widely known of these disorders include certain movement disorders and myasthenia gravis. More recent interest in synaptic dysfunction has focused on neurodevelopmental and...
A previous study of 22 medical patients with DSM-III-R-defined anxiety disorders showed clinically and statistically significant improvements in subjective and objective symptoms of anxiety and panic following an 8-week outpatient physician-referred group stress reduction intervention based on mindfulness meditation. Twenty subjects demonstrated significant reductions in Hamilton and Beck...
(+/-)3,4-Methylene-dioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, or 'Ecstasy') effects on serotonin system function and behaviour in humans are unclear. Fifteen MDMA users, who did not have other drug dependencies or alcohol abuse, and had not used other drugs for prolonged periods, and 15 control individuals were included in a study to assess the biological and psychological changes after chronic use of MDMA....