Current Medicinal Chemistry
August 20, 2009
John S. Adams
7 citations
Pyramidal neurons in layer 5 of the cerebral cortex are involved in learning and memory and have complex connections with other neurons through a very large array of dendrites. These dendrites can switch between long term depression and long term potentiation depending on global summation of various inputs. The plasticity of the input into pyramidal neurons makes the neuronal output variable....
Psychopharmacology
July 1, 2009
Michael B. Gatch, Margaret A. Rutledge, Theresa M. Carbonaro et al.
Rationale There has been increased recreational use of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), but little is known of its discriminative stimulus effects. Objectives The present study assessed the similarity of the discriminative stimulus effects of DMT to other types of hallucinogens and to psychostimulants. Methods Rats were trained to discriminate DMT from saline. To test the similarity of DMT to known...
Emergency Medicine News
June 1, 2009
Leon Gussow
Quick: Name the person who started the psychedelic movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Most people old enough to understand the question or who read Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test would probably name Ken Kesey, Wavy Gravy, or perhaps Timothy Leary. But the surprising answer is that the concept of deliberately ingesting plants or chemicals to induce hallucinations was introduced into...
European journal of pharmaceutics and biopharmaceutics : official journal of Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Pharmazeutische Verfahrenstechnik e.V
June 1, 2009
Zeynep S Teksin, Insong J. Lee, Noble N Nemieboka et al.
76 citations
Salvinorin A is an unregulated potent hallucinogen isolated from the leaves of Salvia divinorum. It is the only known non-nitrogenous kappa-opioid selective agonist, and rivals synthetic lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in potency. The objective of this study was to characterize the in vitro transport, in vitro metabolism, and pharmacokinetic properties of Salvinorin A. The transport...
TemaNord
May 19, 2009
Christer M. Andersson, Jørn Gry, Jakob Kristinsson
42 citations
In some parts of the world mushrooms have had a central role in religious ritual ceremonies. Ethnomycological studies among the Indian tribes of Mexico - the Aztecs and the Chichimecas - revealed the mushrooms to be hallucinogenic. Chemists from a leading Pharmaceutical company took over, isolated and described the mushroom alkaloid psilocybin, that upon dephosphorylation after collection of...
Epigenetics
April 30, 2009
Dennis R. Grayson, Ying Chen, Erbo Dong et al.
54 citations
The role of methylation in the history of psychiatry has traversed a storied path. The original trans-methylation hypothesis was proposed at a time when chlorpromazine had been synthesized but not yet marketed as an antipsychotic (Thorazine). The premise was that abnormal metabolism led to the methylation of biogenic amines in the brains of schizophrenia patients and that these hallucinogenic...
Educational Media Reviews Online
April 27, 2009
Fran Mentch
Distributed by National Film Board of Canada, 1123 Broadway, Suite 307, New York, NY 10010; 800-542-2164Produced by Kent MartinDirected by Connie Littlefield2002, DVD, color, 57 min. If you need a film demonstrating that science and medicine are culture bound, this is it. As a member of the baby-boom generation I sat down to watch this film thinking, what can I learn about LSD that I don’t...
Drugs and Alcohol Today
April 13, 2009
Introduction This personal account written by an anorexia sufferer explains how a carefully planned experience with LSD set her on the road to recovery. She explains how the cognitive changes brought about on LSD inspired her to change her attitude towards food and desire to get well, enhancing the recovery process.
Psychopharmacology
April 2009
Herbert Barry, James B. Appel
One important technique in behavioral pharmacology is to train laboratory animals to discriminate between a psychoactive drug effect and a nondrug condition. Tests with different drugs have identified several categories of drugs that have different discriminable effects. The two authors describe and discuss the early research on discriminable effects of sedative and hallucinogenic drugs and...
Trends in Neurosciences
April 1, 2009
Javier González-Maeso, Stuart C. Sealfon
Research on psychedelics such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and dissociative drugs such as phencyclidine (PCP) and the symptoms, neurochemical abnormalities and treatment of schizophrenia have converged. The effects of hallucinogenic drugs resemble some of the core symptoms of schizophrenia. Some atypical antipsychotic drugs were identified by their high affinity for serotonin 5-HT(2A)...