Parsa Yousefi, Kenneth Shinozuka, Patrick Vizeli et al.
Psychoactive drugs profoundly alter consciousness, but the neural mechanisms by which they do so remain poorly understood. Global workspace theory may provide a framework for investigating these mechanisms. The global workspace, a candidate neural substrate of consciousness, is a set of brain regions that integrate and disseminate information to the rest of the brain. According to a recent...
Ceyda Sayalı
preprint
Classic psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD are known to acutely disrupt executive function, producing impairments in response inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Paradoxically, these compounds often lead to lasting improvements in cognitive flexibility, insight, and goal-directed behavior in the days and weeks following administration. This apparent contradiction has...
Dan Petrovitch, Sean M. Mitchell, Jason van Allen et al.
preprint
Introduction: Treatment-outcome expectancies are an individual’s beliefs about how a medical or psychological intervention will affect them and others. These response expectancies represent serious potential confounds to clinical trials of psychedelic-assisted therapies for a variety of conditions because of difficulties associated with blinding psychedelic trials. On the other hand,...
Vincent Joralemon
preprint
The term “psychedelic” lacks a consensus definition, yet a growing body of regulatory and commercial infrastructure—FDA clinical-trial guidance, AMA reimbursement codes, research grants, and insurance coverage decisions—turns on whether a given substance falls within the category. This short essay argues that the boundaries of the “psychedelic” label are doing significant normative work that is...
Jesús Isaac Castillo-Sánchez
preprint
Abstract The COMP006 Phase 3 trial showed that 39% of patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) respond to a single 25 mg dose of psilocybin, while 61% do not — at identical dose, protocol, and pharmacological exposure. No mechanistic explanation for this heterogeneity has been established. Here we propose and validate a two-threshold model in which the psilocybin dose-response...
Dimitrios Liokaftos
Microdosing consists of the regular use of sub-perceptive doses of psychedelics substances, most notably psilocybin (“magic”) mushrooms and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). First observed in specific environments and subcultures before spreading in wider areas of human activity, microdosing has become one of the better recognised faces of the current “psychedelics renaissance.” Building on a...
Dimitrios Liokaftos
Background: In recent years, microdosing psychedelics has been a growing phenomenon attracting media, popular and scientific attention. The practice entails the use of sub-hallucinogenic doses of psychedelics substances such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. Users report a multiplicity of motivations for and benefits from engaging with microdosing that run across the enhancement/therapy...
David Carhart
In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began the project MK-ULTRA, a dedicated effort to pursue enhanced interrogation methods and explore the possibility of "mind control" --- a process by which people could be compelled to act against their own will and interests. This project built on Project Bluebird and Artichoke, CIA projects focused on chemical warfare, and the then-novel...
Vincent Joralemon
preprint
Psychedelic therapies—ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, DMT, and ibogaine—are moving from prohibition to regulated care, but commercialization hinges on FDA approval, DEA scheduling, and payor (insurance) coverage. This Article maps the U.S. regulatory labyrinth and analyzes how business models succeed or fail under these constraints. It explains bifurcated rescheduling (DEA reschedules the...
Vincent Joralemon
preprint
Clinical trials for novel therapeutics are extraordinarily expensive, and psychedelicassisted therapies pose a particular financing challenge: the underlying compounds (MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, ibogaine) are off-patent or unpatentable, limiting the traditional commercial incentives that fund late-stage drug development. This essay examines an emerging alternative-the "pseudo-nonprofit" financing...