Psychedelics – News and Features

Researchers have discovered that use of the synthetic psychedelic, 5-methocy-N,-N-dimethyltryptamine, appears to be associated with unintended improvements in self-reported depression and anxiety when given in a ceremonial group setting.

Drug abuse has become an increasingly serious problem all over the world. Could fingerprinting be an appropriate method for determining whether a person has taken drugs?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Spravato (esketamine) nasal spray, in conjunction with an oral antidepressant, for the treatment of depression in adults who have tried other antidepressant medicines but have not benefited from them.

The growing popularity of microdosing – taking tiny amounts of psychedelic drugs to boost mood and mental acuity – is based on anecdotal reports of its benefits. Now, a study in rats by researchers at the University of California, Davis suggests microdosing can provide relief for symptoms of depression and anxiety, but also found potential negative effects.

New research shows how the depth of sleep can impact our brain’s ability to efficiently wash away waste and toxic proteins. Because sleep often becomes increasingly lighter and more disrupted as we become older, the study reinforces and potentially explains the links between aging, sleep deprivation, and heightened risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

A form of the hallucinogenic party drug ketamine has cleared one of the final hurdles toward clinical use as an antidepressant. During a meeting at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Silver Spring, Maryland, an independent advisory panel voted 14-2 in favor of recommending a compound known as esketamine for use in treating depression.

Researchers have launched an ultra-large virtual docking library expected to grow to more than 1 billion molecules by next year. It will expand by 1000-fold the number of such “make-on-demand” compounds readily available to scientists for chemical biology and drug discovery.

Clinical treatments for neurological and mood disorders like social anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder have failed to show consistent efficacy in treating patients. VistaGen Therapeutics is aiming to correct that. We talked to VistaGen’s CEO, Shawn Singh, about the need for treatments in this area and why Vistagen thinks their compounds AV-101 and PH94B could be promising therapies.

Patients with moderate to severe depression reported significant improvements in mood when researchers precisely stimulated a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), according to a UC San Francisco research study published Nov. 29, 2018, in Current Biology. The results are an important step toward developing a therapy for people with treatment-resistant depression, which affects as many as 30 percent of depression patients, the authors say.

New research from King’s College London has found that MDMA, the main ingredient in ecstasy, causes people to cooperate better - but only with trustworthy people. In the first study to look in detail at how MDMA impacts cooperative behaviour the researchers also identified changes to activity in brain regions linked to social processing.