Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) affects over 280 million people globally and remains a leading cause of disability. Psilocybin has emerged as a promising treatment, with evidence suggesting modulation of neural oscillatory activity relevant to mood regulation. Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) offer non-invasive methods for evaluating these...
RATIONALE: Psilocybin (PSI) microdosing, defined as a repeated administration of sub-perceptual doses, has gained increasing attention as a potential therapeutic strategy for affective and anxiety disorders. However, some molecular mechanisms, particularly regarding epigenetic regulation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), remain poorly understood. OBJECTIVES: Therefore, the present study...
Repeated low-dose psilocybin is being developed as a scalable outpatient treatment for mood and anxiety disorders, but chronic exposure raises concern because psilocin binds the cardiac serotonin 5-HT2B receptor, whose sustained agonism causes drug-induced valvular heart disease (VHD). We evaluated this risk using an exposure–response model that incorporates functional efficacy and exposure...
Psilocybin is a classic psychedelic known to alter subjective experience and induce lasting psychological changes, including increased cognitive flexibility and reduced rigid self-related beliefs. Contextual factors, including preparatory mental states, are thought to play a key role in shaping these effects. Compassion imagery, which engages care-affiliative motivational systems, may represent...
Psilocybin shows potential in neuropsychiatric disorders but has a complex relationship with epilepsy and seizures. We reviewed literature up to November 2025 to identify studies relevant to psilocybin's effects on seizures and epilepsy, including our research on serotonergic modulation. Core studies addressing the research question and supplementary mechanistic evidence were included for...
SUMMARY How psychedelics act on cortical dendrites to produce long-lasting structural plasticity remains poorly understood. Here, we characterize the effects of psilocybin on dendritic calcium dynamics in pyramidal tract neurons of the mouse medial frontal cortex. Psilocybin transiently increases calcium event rates in apical dendritic tufts over a time course that parallels the drug’s...
Background Psilocybin-assisted therapy is continuing to show significant positive effects for palliative cancer patients, both in reducing symptoms and improving one’s sense of hope and meaning. Most research has focused on individual therapy models, limiting access and overlooking potential community-based benefits. Methods This qualitative study describes the results of patients experiencing...
Psilocybin shows therapeutic promise for several psychiatric disorders, but the acute perceptual and cognitive alterations produced by conventional doses (10-25 mg) require in-clinic supervision, which limits scalability. Whether the therapeutically relevant pharmacology of psilocybin can be separated from its hallucinogenic activity remains unresolved. To address this gap, we conducted a Phase...
Background In natural product psilocybin retreats, "dose" is commonly defined by grams of dried mushrooms, despite substantial batch-to-batch variability in psilocybin content. This limits safety predictability and undermines reproducibility and between-study comparability. We report an observational field evaluation of an existing, ICH Q2(R1)-validated rapid colorimetric/photometric assay...
Abstract Psilocybin is a serotonergic psychedelic drug with emerging therapeutic applications, yet its actions under glutamatergic dysfunction, and relevance to schizophrenia and associated psychiatric disorders, remain unclear. We examined the acute and long-lasting effects of psilocybin (1 mg/kg, intraperitoneal) on behavioral and neural outcomes in the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5...
Background. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an important public health challenge typically treated with trauma-focused psychotherapy and Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). However, high rates of residual symptoms associated with these standard treatments have led to a renewed interest in psychedelic-assisted therapies. Aim. This review attempts to examine emerging...
Background: When administered alongside monitoring and support, psilocybin has shown promise in the treatment of multiple psychiatric conditions. However, the contribution and nature of participant support in the context of psychedelic trials are much debated. Aims: We sought to further illustrate the structure and format of the monitoring and support used in Compass Pathfinder Ltd (Compass)...
The question of whether the striking antidepressant effects of psilocybin reported in randomised trials can be reproduced in everyday care remains largely unanswered. This is because those trials enrol highly selected patients, withdraw concomitant medication and deliver treatment under tightly standardised protocols. In this issue, Jungwirth et al. provide one of the first responses from...
Psychedelics such as psilocybin have been linked to enhanced neuroplasticity and symptom relief in affective disorders, but the neurobiological mechanisms and impact of environmental context remain unclear. Here, we tested whether a single dose of psilocybin (0.3 mg/kg) alters synaptic density in healthy individuals and whether setting-dependent subjective experience shapes this effect. Fifteen...
AbstractPsychedelic-assisted interventions are complex, context-sensitive interventions in which pharmacological, psychological, relational, environmental, cultural, and temporal processes interact. Trials of psilocybin and related compounds have reported promising but heterogeneous findings across psychiatric, substance-use, and existential indications, while also revealing challenges related...
Demoralization, a syndrome of helplessness, hopelessness, and loss of meaning and chronic pain are common sources of distress in early palliative care. Psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT) is an emerging intervention with preliminary data suggesting improvements in pain and demoralization. To date, PAT has not been studied among people living with both demoralization and chronic pain nor has it...
Serotonergic psychedelics are advancing as psychiatric treatments, yet acute responses vary between individuals and the contribution of sex, a fundamental biological variable, remains largely unexamined. We pooled two double-blind, placebo-controlled studies in healthy volunteers (N = 72; 31 male, 41 female) comparing psilocybin 15 mg, 2C-B 20 mg, and LSD 50 μg. Linear mixed models tested sex...
Bipolar II disorder (BD-II) is characterised by hypomanic and depressive episodes with the latter tending to dominate the clinical course of the disorder, and they are often associated with suicidality. Despite available guideline-based recommendations for first-line pharmacological treatments, patient outcomes remain suboptimal, especially for those with chronic depression and suicidal...
Abstract Background Research on psilocybin's antidepressant effects has been investigated rigorously over the last 20 years. Psilocybin has been used in both major depressive disorder (MDD) and treatment resistant depression (TRD) cohort with promising results. Aims The aim of this review was to summarize the reporting practices used in psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT) trials for MDD and TRD....