Psychedelics Research Links August 2020

This is all the other psychedelic research that came out in August 2020. These papers don’t (yet) have their own page in our database.

Find our recap of the most interesting papers this month in our August Recap.

You can find all interesting papers in our Papers Database.

Related papers

Use CTRL/CMD+F to quickly search if anything relevant for you has been published this month.

• The Agency of Ibogaine: Emic Understandings of a Grassroots Psychiatry in Mexico (thesis)

• At the Intersection of Palliative Care, Psychedelic Medicine, and Healthcare Reform: A Call for a New Hospice and Palliative Care Movement (commentary article)

• Increased use of ketamine for the treatment of depression: Benefits and concerns (review on the current state of ketamine for (treatment-resistant) depression (TRD), and suggestions for the future development of glutamatergic drugs without the ‘psychomimetic’ effects)

• Patterns of ecstasy use amongst live music event attendees and their opinions on pill testing: a cross-sectional study (a survey study finds that visitors of a live music event claim they would change their (MDMA) drug-taking behavior if more pill testing was done)

• Safety pharmacology and pharmacogenetics of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) (thesis, analysis of data from 166 phase I MDMA studies. “In summary, apart from variations within CYPs, genetic polymorphisms seem to play a subordinate role in the acute MDMA effects and are unlikely to sum up all interindividual variations.“)

• Connectome Harmonic Decomposition of Human Brain Dynamics Reveals a Landscape of Consciousness (pre-print, could be very interesting neuroscience paper on consciousness)

• Hallucinogens and Psychedelics (chapter in ‘Principles of Forensic Toxicology’, does however start with describing psychedelics as psychomimetic and as hallucinogens, phrasing that is out of style)

• Better living through chemistry: MDMA’s prosocial mechanism as a starting point for improved therapeutics (short article, a ‘hot topic’, about MDMA)

• What Psilocybin Taught Me, One Year Later (personal experience one year after psilocybin experience)

• The Yale Manual for Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy of Depression (using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a Therapeutic Frame)

• Psychedelics and virtual reality: parallels and applications (finding parallels between psychedelics and VR)

• Structure–Activity Relationship Analysis of Psychedelics in a Rat Model of Asthma Reveals the Anti-Inflammatory Pharmacophore (2C-H was found to be the most anti-inflammatory and least-psychedelic combo, in a rat model) (also reported on in Massive Science)

• Reflections on the Role of Language in Psychedelic Research (article on language from MIND Foundation)

• Psychedelic Science in Post-Covid Psychiatry (commentary on how psychedelic/psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) can help a post-covid world)

• Reframing Bummer Trips: Scientific and Cultural Explanations to Adverse Reactions to Psychedelic Drug Use (reflection on how ‘bad’ trips were used politically)

• Plasma psilocin critically determines behavioral and neurobiological effects of psilocybin (preprint)

• The Evolution of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Treatment: Lessons Learned from MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy (thesis)

• Pharmacological treatment of eating disorders, comorbid mental health problems, malnutrition and physical health consequences (Review of pharmacological treatments of eating disorders that mentions psychedelics (as promising))

• MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Examining Ethnoracial Differences in Efficacy and Safety, and a Mixed-Methods Case Study of a Participant of Color (thesis, but positive signal that effects hold beyond the WEIRD population)

• Can ‘floating’ predict treatment response to ketamine? Data from three randomized trials of individuals with treatment-resistant depression (no, “the findings do not support the hypothesis that ketamine’s antidepressant effects are mediated by the dissociative depersonalization subtype SE of floating”)

• Addressing fear of death and dying: traditional and innovative interventions

• Phytochemical, Cytotoxicity, Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Psilocybe Natalensis Magic Mushroom (finding anti-inflammatory effects)

• Psilocybin as an Effective Treatment for Patients with Life-Threatening Cancer and Psychological Distress: A Critically Appraised Topic (thesis, review)

• Who takes the trip? Personality and hallucinogen use among college students and adolescents (“…facets of sensation seeking, impulsivity, and emotion dysregulation positively predicted ever having used hallucinogens, earlier initiation of use, and lifetime use among college students“)

• Psychedelics as a Treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia (mini-review)