Psychedelics Research Links August 2021

This is all the other psychedelic research that came out in August 2021. These papers don’t (yet) have their own page in our database.

Find our recap of the most interesting papers this month in our Summer 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 Potential Role of Serotonergic Hallucinogens in Depression Treatment (review, favorable, need for better quality studies)

• Discovering the Effects of Treating Anxiety Disorders for Adults Through Creative Arts Therapy During a Non-Ordinary State Experience (thesis, anxiety)

• Pharmacological effects of harmine and its derivatives: a review (review, harmine is a principal component of ayahuasca)

• Novel approaches to estimate prefrontal synaptic strength in vivo in humans: of relevance to depression, schizophrenia, and ketamine (related, synaptic strength is often studied under the influence of psychedelics)

• Understanding NMDA-mediated ketamine activity (short article, ketamine action)

• Engineering Safer Psychedelics for Treating Addiction (review/proposal for non-hallucinogenic psychedelics in the treatment of addiction)

• Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy for Existential Suffering: Facilitating Self-Transcendence at the End-of-Life (review of psychedelics for end-of-life anxiety)

• Losing the Self in Near-Death Experiences: The Experience of Ego-Dissolution (“This study suggests that the experience of dissolved ego-boundaries is a common feature of NDEs.“)

• Spravato or the question: “How much can an antidepressant cost?” (editorial)

• Sex-specific effects of psychedelics on prepulse inhibition of startle in 129S6/SvEv mice (in mice, DOI (substituted amphetamine, psychedelic) sex differences)

• Prevention and Management of Common Adverse Effects of Ketamine and Esketamine in Patients with Mood Disorders (review, preventing adverse events associated with (es)ketamine treatments for depression)

• Use of hallucinogens in Slovakia: Does it differ from global trends? (mostly similar results in Slovakia, males were more extreme in use and views on decriminalization)

• Age affects temporal response, but not durability, to serial ketamine infusions for treatment refractory depression (younger people respond quicker to ketamine treatment, but after 6 infusions results are the same, i.e. same durability)

• Probing the Future of Psychedelics for Mental Health (notes on adoption of psychedelics as medicines at conference)

• Ketamine decreases neuronally released glutamate via retrograde stimulation of presynaptic adenosine A1 receptors (in rats, “ by studying neuronally released glutamate, we identified a novel retrograde adenosinergic feedback mechanism that mediate inhibitory actions of ketamine on glutamate release that may contribute to its rapid antidepressant action.“)

• What can we learn from the history of research on psychedelic drugs in the addictions? (editorial)

• In vitro effects of harmine against Echinococcus granulosus protoscoleces by stimulating DNA damage (in cells, harmine (part of ayahuasca brew) shows promise against a type of tapeworm)

• Contribution of serotonin receptor subtypes to hallucinogenic activity of 25I-NBOMe and to its effect on neurotransmission (in rats, “5-HT2A and 5-HT2C receptors play a role in 25I-NBOMe-induced hallucinogenic activity and in glutamate, DA and 5-HT release in the rat frontal cortex as their respective antagonists attenuated the effect of this hallucinogen.”)

• Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, Psilocybin and Dimethyltryptamine in Depression Treatment: A Systematic Review (review)

• Induced fit, ensemble binding space docking and Monte Carlo simulations of MDMA ‘ecstasy’ and 3D pharmacophore design of MDMA derivatives on the human serotonin transporter (hSERT) (“our modelling may aid the rational design of novel entactogenic compounds and contribute to the understanding of an action mechanism [of psychedelics]”)

• Dissociative symptoms with intravenous ketamine in treatment-resistant depression exploratory observational study (n=49, finds no dissociative effects of ketamine after the first hour, nor correlation of the measures used with treatment outcomes)

• Pharmacologic Similarities and Differences Among Hallucinogens (review)

• A synaptic locus for TrkB signaling underlying ketamine rapid antidepressant action (“these data demonstrate a requirement for BDNF-TrkB signaling in CA1 neurons in ketamine-induced synaptic potentiation and identify a specific synaptic locus in eliciting ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects“)

• Anti-inflammatory and analgesic actions of bufotenine through inhibiting lipid metabolism pathway (toad venom (bufotenine) shows promise as inflammation suppressant)

• Switching to Intranasal Esketamine Maintains the Antidepressant Response to Intravenous Racemic Ketamine Administration: A Case Series of 10 Patients (n=9, shows benefit/efficacy of switching to esketamine for maintenance treatment, but without control/racemix group can’t draw conclusions)

• Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy and Carl Jung’s Red Book (viewpoint)

• Pharmacologic Similarities and Differences Among Hallucinogens (review, good starting point on (psycho)pharmacological differerences and similarities between psychedelics)

• The Effect of Psilocybin on Personality (thesis)

• Smarter with Drugs? (dissertation)

• Prescription Psychedelics: The Road from FDA Approval to Clinical Practice (editorial, although encouraged by FDA, the DEA reassesment of psychedelics (which schedule they are in) could hold back implementation after successful phase III studies, same for state-level approval, also notes on off-label prescription)

• DMT: It’s dynamite! a case study critically exploring the contemporary scholarly reporting of dimethyltryptamine-induced spiritual experiences (“Four key kinds of experiences were recognised as: (a) dissolution of the ego and/or physical matter); (b) an expansion of consciousness; (c) contact; and (d) transformation.“)

• Stretching and squeezing of neuronal log firing rate distribution by psychedelic and intrinsic brain state transitions (in mice, “Drug ingestion significantly stretched the distribution of log firing rates of the population of recorded neurons“)

• Ayahuasca, a psychedelic beverage, modulates neuroplasticity induced by ethanol in mice (in mice, “These results suggest a potential application of ayahuasca to modulate the neuroplastic changes induced by ethanol.“)

• New Frontiers or a Bursting Bubble? Psychedelic Therapy Beyond the Dichotomy (opinion, caution and optimism)

• Ketamine in depression and electroconvulsive therapy (review)

• Enhancing equity-oriented care in psychedelic medicine: Utilizing the EQUIP framework (commentary)

• Six-week oral ketamine treatment for chronic suicidality is associated with increased grey matter volume (long-term ketamine treatment associated with brain plasticity)

• Prevalence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) in Brazil based on oral fluid analysis of samples collected at electronic music festivals and parties (“More than one drug was identified in 79.9 % of samples … MDMA is still the most common party and electronic music festival drug, although NPS were identified in more than one-third of oral fluid samples.“)

• Treatment-Resistant Depression: Approaches to Treatment (review, profiles both esketamine and psilocybin)

• How do psychostimulants enter the human brain? Analysis of the role of the proton-organic cation antiporter (how do psychedelics reach your brain)

• Psychotherapy-supported MDMA treatment for PTSD (commentary, supported by VA)