The development of 5-HT2A receptor agonists has been considerably marginalized since the demonstration that the tryptaminergic drugs, LSD and psilocybin, or the phenylakylamine drugs, mescaline and DOI, exert their hallucinogenic properties via the stimulation of 5-HT2A receptors. Nonetheless, the ability of drugs to stimulate 5-HT2A receptors is not necessarily associated with psychedelic...
Alcohol use disorder represents a serious clinical, social and personal burden on its sufferers and a significant financial strain on society. Current treatments, both psychological and pharmacological are poor, with high rates of relapse after medical detoxification and dedicated treatment programs. The earliest historical roots of psychedelic drug-assisted psychotherapy in the 1950s were...
This exercise, the group first is engages in a general discusses of death and dying and the life–giving qualities that ensue from an encounter with death. The simple procedure almost always elicits profound reactions, particularly from adults in the late thirties and older. Imagine that as body is buries or cremated, essence merges with the source of the universe, with the universal energy,...
The search for the universal laws of human brain function is still on-going but progress is being made. Here we describe the novel concepts of connectome harmonics and connectome-harmonic decomposition, which can be used to characterize the brain activity associated with any mental state. We use this new frequency-specific language to describe the brain activity elicited by psilocybin and LSD...
A receptor map of serotonin distribution is integrated into a model of the dynamic activity of the brain under the effects of LSD. The approach opens new avenues to understand experimental manipulations of healthy brain activity and offers a novel drug-discovery platform.
Sleep paralysis is a state of involuntary immobility occurring at sleep onset or offset, often accompanied by uncanny “ghost-like” hallucinations and extreme fear reactions. I provide here a neuropharmacological account for these hallucinatory experiences by evoking the role of the serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2AR). Research has shown that 5-HT2AR activation can induce visual hallucinations,...
K anesthesia was introduced about half a century ago. In recent decades, this drug, in subanesthetic doses, has also demonstrated efficacy for off-label indications including treating acute and chronic pain, treating agitation, treating depression, and inducing sedation. Thus, there are studies of subanesthetic dosing with ketamine for treating pain in emergency medicine settings, treating...
Neurophysiological recordings are dominated by arhythmical activity whose spectra can be characterised by power-law functions, and on this basis are often referred to as reflecting scale-free brain dynamics (1/fβ). Relatively little is known regarding the neural generators and temporal dynamics of this arhythmical behaviour compared to rhythmical behaviour. Here we used Irregularly Resampled...
The 2C drugs are hallucinogenic phenethylamines. They and their n-benzyloxymethyl analogs have become popular as "legal highs," and significant toxicity has been attributed to their use. We report on a case of seizures, systemic inflammatory response, and rhabdomyolysis associated with laboratory-confirmed 4-iodo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine and 4-iodo-2,5-dimethoxy-N-(2-methoxybenzyl)...
Background and Objectives The popularity of tryptamines such as N,N ‐dimethyltryptamine (DMT) appears to be increasing in the United States (US), but epidemiologic literature on prevalence of use is scant. This paper aims to determine trends in prevalence and correlates of past‐year tryptamine use among a nationally representative sample of young adults in the US. Methods Participants in the...