Psychedelics Research Links July 2021

This is all the other psychedelic research that came out in July 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.

• Opioid properties of nitrous oxide and ketamine contribute to their antidepressant actions (review/letter to the editor, N20 and ketamine opioid properties as causal mechanisms for antidepressant effects)

• Altered states phenomena induced by visual flicker light stimulation (“Our data demonstrate that flicker light stimulation is capable of inducing visual effects with an intensity rated to be similar in strength to effects induced by psychedelic substances and thereby support the investigation of potentially shared underlying neuronal mechanisms.“)

• Online news media reporting of ketamine as a treatment for depression from 2000 to 2017 (review of media mentions of ketamine, increases and overall correct reporting)

• The Influence of Psychedelic Drugs on the ‘Sense of Self’ (student paper)

• Self-reported Subjective Effects of Analytically Confirmed New Psychoactive Substances Consumed by e-Psychonauts: Protocol for a Longitudinal Study Using a New Internet-Based Methodology (study protocol)

• Brain volume in chronic ketamine users – relationship to sub-threshold psychotic symptoms and relevance to schizophrenia (chronic ketamine useres had less grey matter than other poly drug users)

• Efficacy of ketamine and esketamine on functional outcomes in treatment-resistant depression: A systematic review (review, finds lack of evidence/reporting on functional outcomes)

• Opioid receptor system contributes to the acute and sustained antidepressant-like effects, but not the hyperactivity motor effects of ketamine in mice (in mice)

• Gut microbiota is involved in the antidepressant-like effect of (S)-norketamine in an inflammation model of depression (gut bacteria and ketamine, finds metabolity of esketamine (es-norketamine) to work by changing gut bacteria)

• A complex impact of systemically administered 5-HT2A receptor ligands on conditioned fear (in mice, testing novel psychedelic compound that shows lower conditioned fear response)

• The Ethic of Access: An AIDS Activist Won Public Access to Experimental Therapies, and This Must Now Extend to Psychedelics for Mental Illness (need for access to psychedelic therapies)

• Microglia enable mature perineuronal nets disassembly upon anesthetic ketamine exposure or 60-Hz light entrainment in the healthy brain (in cells, finds possibly plasticity promoting effects of ketamine)

• Impaired discrimination of a subanesthetic dose of ketamine in a maternal immune activation model of schizophrenia risk (in rats, lower response to ketamine in rats with risk factor for schizophrenia (model))

• Psychedelic Oscillations: A Systematic Review of the Electrophysiological Correlates of Classic Psychedelics (thesis, “Decreases in alpha power, increased signal diversity, and decreases in default mode network activity might be important neural correlates of the psychedelic state. However, inconsistencies in the results and heterogeneity in study design are some of the limitations that have to be considered when interpreting these results“)

• The Vine of the Soul: Antidepressant and Anxiolytic Effects of Ayahuasca (thesis, systematic review)

• Ketamine for TreatmentResistant Depression: Moving Away From Conventional Antidepressants (thesis, systematic review)

• Pharmacological assistance for psychotherapy (review)

• Relevance of 5-HT2A Receptor Modulation of Pyramidal Cell Excitability for Dementia-Related Psychosis: Implications for Pharmacotherapy (review, surpressing 5-HT2a receptors may be benificial in treating dementia-related psychosis)

• Profile and correlates of colorimetric reagent kit use among people who use ecstasy/MDMA and other illegal stimulants in Australia (who tests their drugs, 36% did, of which 86% used a colorimetic reagent kit)

• Effect of Esketamine Nasal Spray on Olfactory Function and Nasal Tolerability in Patients with Treatment-Resistant Depression: Results from Four Multicenter, Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Phase III Studies (large study (n=1142) finds no negative effects on olfactory or nasal health after ketamine treatment)

• Why do people use new psychoactive substances? Development of a new measurement tool in six European countries (why do people use new psychoactive substances (NPS), “coping, enhancement, social, conformity and expansion motives“)

• Fatal and non-fatal health incidents related to recreational ecstasy use (1/900 risk of moderate to severe health risk per Ecstasy pill in The Netherlands)

• User perceptions of long-term costs and benefits of MDMA use: Findings from a large online sample (pre-print, survey (n=886), mostly positive long-term effects found)

• Default mode network functional connectivity negatively associated with trait Openness to Experience (related to psychedelics and they are mentioned, those with more connectivity within DMN have lower Openness)

• Pharmacokinetic Modeling of Ketamine Enantiomers and Their Metabolites After Administration of Prolonged-Release Ketamine With Emphasis on 2,6-Hydroxynorketamines (“The model may be useful for identifying dosing regimens aiming at optimal plasma concentrations of 2,6-hydroxynorketamines“)

• Research abuses against people of colour and other vulnerable groups in early psychedelic research (“Our findings draw attention to the history of research abuses against people of colour in Western psychedelic research“)

• A new approach methodology (NAM) for the prediction of (nor)ibogaine-induced cardiotoxicity in humans (using PBK models to predict toxicity of ibogaine)

• A Potential Case of Acute Ketamine Withdrawal: Clinical Implications for the Treatment of Refractory Depression (case study, withdrawal after prolonged ketamine use for treating depression/SI)

• Intranasal salvinorin A improves neurological outcome in rhesus monkey ischemic stroke model using autologous blood clot (salvia reduced stroke after 28 days in monkeys)

• Racial/ethnic differences in prevalence of hallucinogen use by age cohort: Findings from the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (finds Whites and younger people were most likely to use psychedelics)

• Verbal behavior related to drug reinforcement in polysubstance cannabis users: Comparison across drugs (“Verbal reports of drug use and drug preference are commonly used in drug use research. We found that different types of verbal reports are likely proxies for distinct aspects of drug reinforcement, and the relation between different types of verbal reports vary at the individual level.“)

• Psychedelic drug use and schizotypy in young adults (“Controlling for concomitant drug use, none of our analyses found significant associations between psychedelic use and schizotypal traits.“)

• Unseen Women in Psychedelic History (highlighting the role of Mabel Luhan and Valentina Wasson and other psychedelic women pioneers)

• Engineering Safer Psychedelics for Treating Addiction (commentary on tabernanthalog and how non-hallucinogenic psychedelics may offer a solution for addiction treatments)

• Effects of subanesthetic intravenous ketamine infusion on neuroplasticity-related proteins in male and female Sprague-Dawley rats (in rats, “subanesthetic doses of intravenous ketamine infusions produce differences in neuroplasticity-related proteins in the brains of male and female rats.“)

• 25CN-NBOH: A selective agonist for in vitro and in vivo investigations of the serotonin 2A receptor (review)

• Cardiovascular Effects of Combining Subcutaneous or Intravenous Esketamine and the MAO Inhibitor Tranylcypromine for the Treatment of Depression: A Retrospective Cohort Study (“… combining esketamine and this MAOI appears to be safe at standard doses.“)

• On the varieties of psychedelic experiences: belief dynamics and altered states of consciousness (overview of different psychedelic models)

• Cardiovascular Effects of Combining Subcutaneous or Intravenous Esketamine and the MAO Inhibitor Tranylcypromine for the Treatment of Depression: A Retrospective Cohort Study (increased blood pressure in patients that received both esketamine and tranylcypromine (MAOI))

• Q/Is ketamine effective and safe for treatment-resistant depression? (maybe, review of evidence of ketamine for TRD)

• MDMA-Assisted Therapy Highly Effective for PTSD (perspective on phase III MDMA trial)

• Intranasal esketamine and the dawn of precision psychiatry (review)

• Palliative care: is it time for health professionals to talk openly about psychedelic therapy? (perspective, “As doctors prescribe far more dangerous medications on a daily basis, often with less efficacy and sometimes dubious research behind them, I believe the time has now come to put more pressure on the government into reviewing their classification of these compounds“)

• Intranasal esketamine use in bipolar disorder: A case report (n=1, “ This case report demonstrates the potential safety of intranasal esketamine in combination with mood stabilizer therapy in a patient diagnosed with bipolar disorder without recent history of manic or hypomanic episodes.“)

• A draft reference assembly of the Psilocybe cubensis genome (genome sequencing of common psychedelic mushroom)

• Out of the night-time and into the day: Ketamine and MDMA as therapies for mental disorders (review, for Oceania audience)

• Current Perspective on the Therapeutic Preset for Substance-Assisted Psychotherapy (narrative review)

• The meaningful change threshold as measured by the 16-item quick inventory of depressive symptomatology in adults with treatment-resistant major depressive and bipolar disorder receiving intravenous ketamine (changes in depression scores on two different measures)

• A wake-up call: Sleep physiology and related translational discrepancies in studies of rapid-acting antidepressants (review, calls for observing and practicing better timing with regards to ketamine administration)

• The evolution of the psychedelic revolution (perspective)