A bstract Contemporary psychedelic research highlights the value of user experience reports, yet their verbose, subjective nature poses challenges for clinical utility. This is the first study to pioneer unsupervised automatic text summarization of psychedelic user experience reports, a domain where no human-annotated reference summaries exist. To address this gap, we developed a custom scoring...
Background and aims: Drug discrimination procedures have made important contributions to the pre-clinical investigation of psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT). One of the most important being to highlight the critical role of central 5-HT2A receptor agonism as a mediator of...
Professor Harriet de Wit, a pioneering researcher in psychoactive drugs at the University of Chicago, shares her remarkable 45-year scientific journey in this illuminating Genomic Press Interview. As Director of the Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory and recipient of prestigious honors including the 2019 European Behavioral Pharmacology Society Distinguished Investigator Award, Dr. de Wit...
The 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A receptor (5-HT2AR) is one of the key targets in the development of novel antidepressants. To develop new antidepressants targeting the 5-HT2A receptor, this study established a high-throughput screening method for drugs targeting the 5-HT2A receptor based on the principle of detecting calcium flux signals. The immunofluorescence assay and western blotting were...
Serotonergic psychedelics, including the recreationally used psilocybin and LSD, have become promising therapeutic agents for the treatment of treatment-resistant depression. While it is generally agreed that they exhibit their antidepressant effects by inducing rapid and sustained neuroplasticity, the molecular mechanisms responsible are widely debated. In particular, the role of the serotonin...
Numerous individuals suffer from mental health issues including depression and anxiety, resulting in substantial societal burden. Data suggests individuals are choosing to self-medicate with Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS); however, this phenomenon is poorly understood. We aimed to investigate which NPS are being used to self-medicate, evaluate their perceived effectiveness and examine...
Psychedelics such as psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide upset the brain networks involved in self-awareness and emotion and may lead to altered perception, cognition, and social behaviour, although unsupervised use is still dangerous due to their unpredictable psychological and physiological effects. These drugs cause emotions to be amplified, the ego to dissolve, and sensory vividness...
Depression is a prevalent and heterogeneous disorder with significant personal and social consequences. The rise of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) challenges traditional approaches and underscores the need for a broader neurobiological perspective. When monoaminergic modulation proves insufficient, clinical guidelines increasingly turn to non-monoaminergic interventions such as...
Objective Hallucinogen-persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD) is a rare condition characterized by the re-experiencing of one or more perceptual symptoms that an individual experienced while intoxicated with a hallucinogenic substance when the individual is sober. While there are several case reports of HPPD in adult patients, there is a scarcity of documented cases in children and adolescents....
Neurodegenerative diseases are marked by progressive neuronal loss, inflammation, and impaired plasticity. Although existing treatments provide limited protection for the brain or ability to slow disease progression, emerging research highlights the gut-brain axis and psychedelics as promising new areas for therapeutic development. The gut microbiome, a metabolically active ecosystem,...