Chronic pain affects approximately 8 million Canadians (~20%), impacting their physical and mental health while burdening the health care system with costs of upwards of US $60 billion a year. Indeed, patients are often trialed on numerous medications over several years without reductions to their symptoms. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify new therapies for chronic pain to improve...
Several phase II studies have demonstrated that psilocybin-assisted therapy shows therapeutic potential across a spectrum of neuropsychiatric conditions, including major depressive disorder (MDD). However, the mechanisms underlying its often persisting beneficial effects remain unclear. Observational research suggests that improvements in psychological flexibility may mediate therapeutic...
Rationale: Psychedelic research re-emerged from a period of suppression into the so-called psychedelic renaissance. In parallel, most media reporting has shifted from the overstatement of the risks of psychedelics to overly positive hype. As the empirical evidence is more equivocal than frequently portrayed, the conclusions about the effectiveness of psychedelics should be considered...
The default mode network (DMN) is intricately linked with processes such as self-referential thinking, episodic memory recall, self-projection, and understanding the mindset of others. Over recent years, there has been a surge in examining its functional connectivity, particularly its antagonistic relationship with frontoparietal networks (FPN) involved in top-down attention, executive...
Background: Reference to an intrinsic healing mechanism or an ‘inner healer’ is commonplace amongst psychedelic drug-using cultures. The ‘inner healer’ refers to the belief that psychedelic compounds, plants or concoctions have an intrinsically regenerative action on the mind and brain, analogous to intrinsic healing mechanisms within the physical body, for example, after sickness or injury....
AbstractWork in philosophy of mind often engages in descriptive phenomenology, i.e., in attempts to characterize the phenomenal character of our experience. Nagel’s famous discussion of what it’s like to be a bat demonstrates the difficulty of this enterprise (1974). But while Nagel located the difficulty in our absence of an objective vocabulary for describing experience, I argue that the...
Sleep is crucial for maintaining overall health and wellbeing. It plays vital role in various physiological and cognitive functions. As per Ayurvedic sciences, Nidra is one among the three pillars of life1 and also Adharaneeya vega2. Nidra is one which helps to attain longevity, memory, intelligence and freedom from disease, youthfulness, excellence of lustre, complexion, voice, optimum...
Everyday human interaction heavily relies on emotions, which play a pivotal role in fostering genuine human-machine interaction. Emotional equilibrium is crucial for individual well-being, with regular meditation being a widely acknowledged means to achieve it. This study delves into the effect of meditation on emotional responses using Electroencephalography (EEG) technology. EEG can establish...
Jhāna meditation was little known in the West before the 1980s, historically shrouded in mystery and mostly confined to monastic traditions in Buddhist countries. In recent years, however, deep states of meditation in general, but particularly the jhānas, have been attracting interest from neuroscience researchers as another avenue to explore neural networks and functions in the human brain....
LSD is a potent hallucinogen. It was first synthesised in 1938. It is marketed under numerous names. Ergot, a fungus that develops on rye and grains, is used to make LSD. The effect of LSD is mind-altering, pleasurable, and stimulating. Sometimes, exposure to this drug causes so-called unpleasant experiences, such as “bad trips”. It is classified as a Class 1 drug (highly abused) by the Drug...