Abstract Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability that affects over 300 million people globally. Despite multiple antidepressant trials, approximately one-third of MDD patients remain symptomatic, progressing to treatment-resistant depression (TRD). This persistence possibly is due to the multifaceted etiology of TRD, encompassing biological, psychological, and...
Cephalalgia ReportsMay 1, 2025Jonathan A. Leighton, Chieh Grace Lau, Aisha Savdo et al.2 citations
Background Cluster headache is an excruciating condition for which standard treatments are usually insufficient. Evidence has accumulated that serotonergic psychedelic indoleamines including psilocybin and LSD can be effective in preventing attacks. Methods In this case series, nine patients with episodic and chronic cluster headache that didn’t respond to conventional treatments were treated...
May 1, 2025Jessi Humphreys, Lou Lukas, Yvan Beaussant et al.
Abstract Psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychoactive compound found in more than 200 mushroom species, has an enduring history of use in sacred rituals of Indigenous healers worldwide. With selective serotonin receptor binding, activation of the serotonergic neurological system enables psilocybin to potentiate neuroplasticity, enabling individuals to engage in meaning-making from psychedelic...
Psychedelic drugs, known for their perception-altering properties, are gaining popularity in the treatment of mental health and pain disorders. As exploratory studies demonstrate clinical efficacy with few adverse events, it is expected that more patients will ingest psychedelic drugs. For therapeutic reasons, as with any drug, anaesthesiologists must be aware of its physiological effects and...
Psychedelics are gaining attention for their therapeutic potential in modern and personalized medicine. Online forums such as Erowid provide valuable user insights, but analyses of these experiences using natural language processing (NLP) remain scarce. This study aims to utilize NLP, including sentiment and lexicon analysis, to examine user-generated experience reports on psilocybin-containing...
Chronic pain is a debilitating disease with current treatments lacking efficacy and safety, therefore discovery of new treatments is crucial. Initial studies suggest that psychedelics may be feasible for targeting pain, however clinical and preclinical controlled studies are necessary to further investigate that possibility. In this study we assessed the effects of two classical psychedelics...
With very few treatments available, post-comatose disorders of consciousness (DoC) pose one of the hardest challenges in modern neurology. Following promising clinical trial results in psychiatry, and a deepening understanding of their brain mechanisms, psychedelics have been suggested as a novel therapeutic drug for DoC patients, given that they increase the entropy or complexity of...
Psilocybin is a hallucinogen with complex neurobiological and behavioral effects. This is the first study to use MRI to follow functional changes in brain activity in response to different doses of psilocybin in fully awake, drug naive rats. We hypothesized that psilocybin would show a dose-dependent increase in activity in the prefrontal cortex and thalamus, while decreasing hippocampal...
We present divergent experiences of 2 patients who participated in a clinical trial of psilocybin-assisted cognitive behavioral therapy for major depressive disorder. Both patients participated in an open trial involving 2 drug administration sessions separated by one month (10 and 25 mg, respectively) along with 12 sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy. The first of the 2 patients had...
Neurobiology of StressMay 1, 2025Alanna Kit, Kate Conway, Savannah Makarowski et al.5 citations
There is growing interest in exploring the therapeutic potential and mechanisms of action of psilocybin on stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), addiction, and disordered eating. Despite promising progressions in preclinical and clinical research, the...