Psychedelic compounds such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) have attracted increasing interest in recent years because of their therapeutic potential in psychiatric disorders. To understand the acute effects of psychedelic drugs in vivo, blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI) has been widely used. In particular, fMRI studies have suggested that MDMA leads to...
Abstract Psilocybin therapy for depression has started to show promise, yet the underlying causal mechanisms are not currently known. Here we leveraged the differential outcome in responders and non-responders to psilocybin (10mg and 25mg, 7 days apart) therapy for depression - to gain new insights into regions and networks implicated in the restoration of healthy brain dynamics. We used...
Neuroimaging studies of psychedelics have advanced our understanding of hierarchical brain organization and the mechanisms underlying their subjective and therapeutic effects. The primary mechanism of action of classic psychedelics is binding to serotonergic 5-HT2A receptors. Agonist activity at these receptors leads to neuromodulatory changes in synaptic efficacy that can have a profound...
Major depressive disorder is one of the primary causes of disability and disease worldwide. The therapy of depression is prevalently based on monoamine reuptake blockers; consequently, investigations aimed to clarify the aetiology of depression have mostly looked at brain areas innervated by monamines and brain circuitry involved in inputs and outputs of these areas. The recent approval of...
Clinical research into serotonergic psychedelics is expanding rapidly, showing promising efficacy across myriad disorders. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) is a commonly used strategy to identify psychedelic-induced changes in neural pathways in clinical and healthy populations. Here we, a large group of psychedelic imaging researchers, review the 42 research...
There is a growing interest in the medical use of psychedelic substances as preliminary studies using them for psychiatric disorders have shown positive results. In particularly, one of these substances is N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) an agonist serotonergic psychedelic that can induce profound alterations in state of consciousness. In this work, we propose a computational method based on...
Hallucinogenic drugs potently affect brain and behavior and have also recently emerged as potentially promising agents in pharmacotherapy. Complementing laboratory rodents, the zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a powerful animal model organism for screening neuroactive drugs, including hallucinogens. Here, we test a battery of ten novel N-benzyl-2-phenylethylamine (NBPEA) derivatives with the 2,4- and...
Psychedelics such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin (magic mushrooms), and mescaline exhibit intense effects on the human brain and behaviour. In recent years, there has been a surge in studies investigating these drugs because clinical studies have shown that these once banned drugs are well tolerated and efficacious in medically supervised low doses called microdosing....
Background There are currently relatively few effective pharmacological treatments for obesity, and existing ones may be associated with limiting side-effects. In the search for novel anti-obesity agents, drugs that modify central serotonergic systems have historically proven to be effective in promoting weight loss. Psilocin, which is rapidly metabolized from psilocybin, is an agonist at...
The active hallucinogen of magic mushrooms, psilocin, is being repurposed to treat nicotine addiction and treatment-resistant depression. Psilocin belongs to the tryptamine class of psychedelic compounds which include the hormone serotonin. It is believed that psilocin exerts its effect by binding to the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor. However, recent in-vivo evidence suggests that psilocin may...