Psilocybin, a prominent psychedelic, recently emerged as a potential therapeutic agent for psychiatric disorders, yet the molecular and cellular mechanisms driving its effects remain poorly understood. To address these knowledge gaps, we focused on the nucleus accumbens (NAc), a forebrain region that regulates reward, motivation, and emotion. Systemic administration of psilocybin (3 mg/kg)...
Published in Scientific Reports (Nature Portfolio), this study extends inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS)—originally proposed as a model for olfactory receptor activation—to the mammalian serotonin receptor (5-HT2A) through quantum-chemical modeling. It finds that several serotonin agonists, including LSD and DOI, share a common vibrational peak near 1500 cm⁻¹ whose intensity...
Anhedonia, the blunted responsiveness to previously rewarding stimuli, is a core symptom of several psychiatric disorders. Ketamine and psilocybin have shown promising evidence in ameliorating anhedonic symptoms in clinical trials. The Probabilistic Reward Task (PRT) was developed to objectively quantify reward responsiveness in clinical populations and laboratory animals. Here, the PRT was...
CureusJuly 9, 2026Omofolarin Debellotte, Amuksha Ravindra Shetty, Yuzhu Wang et al.
Suicide remains a leading global cause of preventable mortality, with sleep disturbances, particularly insomnia, nightmares, and circadian disruption, emerging as critical yet underrecognized contributors to suicidal ideation and behavior. This narrative review synthesizes current evidence on the multifaceted links between sleep disorders and suicidality, integrating findings from...
The serotonergic psychedelic N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) produces rapid antidepressant effects in preclinical and early clinical studies. Therapeutic benefits have been linked to sustained neural plasticity, including adult neurogenesis in rodents. Whether brief DMT exposure engages proliferative responses in human neural stem cells (NSCs) remains unresolved. Using human iPSC-derived NSCs, we...
Neue psychoaktive Substanzen gewinnen zunehmend an Bedeutung im Bereich der öffentlichen Gesundheit und könnten neue therapeutische Ansätze für psychiatrische und kognitive Störungen ermöglichen. MDMA wird derzeit in Phase-3-Studien als Ergänzung zur Psychotherapie zur Behandlung von PTBS untersucht. Nach zwei Phase-3-Studien forderte die FDA in einem Complete Response Letter weitere...
PharmaceuticalsJuly 8, 2026Rodrigo Foss da Silva, Lennon Machado Alves, Fernanda Conte et al.
Background/Objectives: The study sought to investigate the neurotoxicity of NBOHs, which are a class of new psychoactive substances (NPSs) that act as agonists of serotonin 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C receptors, resulting in hallucinogenic effects similar to those of LSD, often found in paper blotters. Methods: Differentiated SH-SY5Y cells were incubated for 24 h with 0.5, 1.0, 3.5, 5 and 10 nM of the...
OBJECTIVE: Eating disorders (EDs) are characterized by high rates of psychiatric comorbidity and suboptimal treatment outcomes. There remain critical gaps in research, including the exploration of effective transdiagnostic interventions. This forum article examines the potential of psilocybin treatment (PT) as a transdiagnostic intervention for EDs and common comorbidities, including the...
Neuroinflammation, particularly Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)-mediated signaling, plays a critical role in the pathophysiology of depression. This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms by which S-ketamine (S-ket) and S-hydroxynorketamine (S-HNK) modulate TLR4 and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARα) signaling in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) to exert antidepressant effects....
A 16-year-old post-pubertal female presented with mixed anxiety-depressive symptoms, prominent obsessive rumination, relationship-centered guilt, reassurance-seeking, fantasy intrusions, and difficulty separating fantasy from reality during periods of distress. Baseline scores were in the moderate range for depression and severe range for anxiety, with a Patient Health Questionnaire-9 score of...