Psychedelics – News and Features

NIH-funded team finds rapid-acting, non-addicting agent in mouse study.

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) scientists propose a new way of understanding of how the brain processes unconscious information into our consciousness. According to the model, consciousness arises only in time intervals of up to 400 milliseconds, with gaps of unconsciousness in between.

Researchers at Imperial College London have visualised the effects of LSD on the brain.

At its best, the drug ketamine relieves depression within two hours and its beneficial effect on patients may last a week. At its worst, ketamine, the party drug "Special K," is addictive and may send recreational users into hallucinations and delusions.

LSD is known to cause changes in consciousness, including "ego-dissolution", or a loss of the sense of self. Despite a detailed knowledge of the action of LSD at specific serotonin receptors, it has not been understood how this these pharmacological effects can translate into such a profound effect on consciousness.

A single dose of psilocybin, the major hallucinogenic component in magic mushrooms, induces long-lasting decreases in anxiety and depression in patients diagnosed with life-threatening cancer according to a new study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology that took place Dec.

Researchers at the Texas A&M Health Science Center are using ketamine, a drug that already exists as an anesthetic, to treat pain.

Over the past several decades, the pharmaceutical industry has been abandoning the research and development of treatments for psychiatric disorders, despite the ever-growing need for novel, more efficacious, and better targeted therapeutics.

Renewed medical interest in the use of psychedelic drugs for anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and addiction has resulted in small research studies that show some success with the controlled use of these drugs, according to an analysis published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

The acquisition will strengthen Allergan's long-term growth profile with the addition of Naurex's lead development product rapastinel (GLYX-13), a once-weekly intravenous Phase 3-ready molecule that has demonstrated rapid, robust and sustained efficacy in multiple Phase 2 clinical studies in depression.