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Nederlands onderzoek naar ibogaïne in de planning

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Een artikel in de Volkskrant van vanochtend (13 augustus 2012) laat zien dat er in Nijmegen plannen zijn voor onderzoek naar de effectiviteit van ibogaïne bij de behandeling van verslaving. Alhoewel ibogaïne al sporadisch wordt gebruikt, is er nog nauwelijks wetenschappelijk onderzoek met mensen gedaan.

Een onderzoeksteam, onder meer bestaande uit verslavingsarts Maarten Belgers en psychiater Toon van Oosteren wil – in samenwerking met de Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen – onderzoeken of ibogaïne onder strikte begeleiding in een medische setting, effectief kan zijn in de behandeling van verslaving. Afgezien van onderzoek in dieren is er nog geen klinisch onderzoek in mensen gedaan.

Toon van Oosteren zegt in de Volkskrant dat ze tien tot vijftien verslaafden een ibogaïnebehandeling willen laten ondergaan. Het team concentreert zich nu eerst op de zoektocht naar ibogaïne die voldoet aan de strenge eisen voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek.

Lees hier het artikel in de Volkskrant.

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Dutch plans for ibogaine research

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An article in Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant shows there are plans to study the effectiveness of ibogaine in the treatment of addiction in Nijmegen.

The research team, consisting of addiction doctor Maarten Belgers and psychiatrist Toon van Oosteren, works in cooperation with the Radboud University in Nijmegen – to study whether ibogaine can – under strict medical conditions – be used effectively in the treatment of substance dependence. Despite various studies in animals, there has yet been no clinical study in humans. This study would be the first.

In de Volkskrant, Toon van Oosteren states that the researchers intend to subject ten to fifteen people with substance dependence to a treatment with ibogaine. Presently, the team is looking for ibogaine that is pure enough to comply with the rigorous scientific standards for medicines.

Read the whole article in Dutch here.

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Personality, Psychopathology, Life Attitudes and Neuropsychological Performance among Ritual Users of Ayahuasca: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Ayahuasca is an Amazonian psychoactive plant beverage containing the serotonergic 5-HT2A agonist N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and monoamine oxidase-inhibiting alkaloids (harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine) that render it orally active. Ayahuasca ingestion is a central feature in several Brazilian syncretic churches that have expanded their activities to urban Brazil, Europe and North America. Members of these groups typically ingest ayahuasca at least twice per month. Prior research has shown that acute ayahuasca increases blood flow in prefrontal and temporal brain regions and that it elicits intense modifications in thought processes, perception and emotion. However, regular ayahuasca use does not seem to induce the pattern of addiction-related problems that characterize drugs of abuse. To study the impact of repeated ayahuasca use on general psychological well-being, mental health and cognition, here we assessed personality, psychopathology, life attitudes and neuropsychological performance in regular ayahuasca users (n = 127) and controls (n = 115) at baseline and 1 year later. Controls were actively participating in non-ayahuasca religions. Users showed higher Reward Dependence and Self-Transcendence and lower Harm Avoidance and Self-Directedness. They scored significantly lower on all psychopathology measures, showed better performance on the Stroop test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Letter-Number Sequencing task from the WAIS-III, and better scores on the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale. Analysis of life attitudes showed higher scores on the Spiritual Orientation Inventory, the Purpose in Life Test and the Psychosocial Well-Being test. Despite the lower number of participants available at follow-up, overall differences with controls were maintained one year later. In conclusion, we found no evidence of psychological maladjustment, mental health deterioration or cognitive impairment in the ayahuasca-using group.

Bouso, J. C, González, D., Fondevila, S., Cutchet, M., Fernández, X., Barbosa, P. C. R., … Riba, J. (2012). Personality, Psychopathology, Life Attitudes and Neuropsychological Performance among Ritual Users of Ayahuasca: A Longitudinal Study. PLoS ONE 7(8), 1-13.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0042421
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Hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of ayahuasca in the treatment of addictions

Ayahuasca is a medicinal plant mixture utilized by indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon River basin for healing purposes. The “vine of the soul” or “vine of death,” as it is known in South America, contains a combination of monoamine oxidase inhibitors and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). When ingested together, these medicines produce profound alterations in consciousness. Increasingly, ayahuasca is being utilized to treat addictions. However, the mechanism of action by which ayahuasca treats addictions remains unclear. We offer four hypotheses to explain possible biochemical, physiological, psychological, and transcendent mechanisms by which ayahuasca may exert its anti-addiction effects.

Liester, M. B., & Prickett, J. I. (2012). Hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of ayahuasca in the treatment of addictions. Journal of psychoactive drugs, 44(3), 200-208. 10.1080/02791072.2012.704590
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The NMDA antagonist ketamine and the 5-HT agonist psilocybin produce dissociable effects on structural encoding of emotional face expressions

Abstract

Rationale
Both glutamate and serotonin (5-HT) play a key role in the pathophysiology of emotional biases. Recent studies indicate that the glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist ketamine and the 5-HT receptor agonist psilocybin are implicated in emotion processing. However, as yet, no study has systematically compared their contribution to emotional biases.

Objectives
This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) and signal detection theory to compare the effects of the NMDA (via S-ketamine) and 5-HT (via psilocybin) receptor system on non-conscious or conscious emotional face processing biases.

Methods
S-ketamine or psilocybin was administrated to two groups of healthy subjects in a double-blind within-subject placebo-controlled design. We behaviorally assessed objective thresholds for non-conscious discrimination in all drug conditions. Electrophysiological responses to fearful, happy, and neutral faces were subsequently recorded with the face-specific P100 and N170 ERP.

Results
Both S-ketamine and psilocybin impaired the encoding of fearful faces as expressed by a reduced N170 over parieto-occipital brain regions. In contrast, while S-ketamine also impaired the encoding of happy facial expressions, psilocybin had no effect on the N170 in response to happy faces.

Conclusion
This study demonstrates that the NMDA and 5-HT receptor systems differentially contribute to the structural encoding of emotional face expressions as expressed by the N170. These findings suggest that the assessment of early visual evoked responses might allow detecting pharmacologically induced changes in emotional processing biases and thus provides a framework to study the pathophysiology of dysfunctional emotional biases.

Schmidt, A., Kometer, M., Bachmann, R., Seifritz, E., & Vollenweider, F.X. (2012). The NMDA antagonist ketamine and the 5-HT agonist psilocybin produce dissociable effects on structural encoding of emotional face expressions. Psychopharmacology, 225(1), 227-239. http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1007/s00213-012-2811-0
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Research on psychedelic substances

Introduction

The term psychedelic (i.e. mind-manifesting) was coined by Humphrey Osmond to characterize a grou p of substances that are capable of liberating human perception from cultural conditioning, providing an op ening to the transcendent qualities of being human. Osmond claimed that LSD and similar drugs may give people insightful experiences that enable them to better understand themselves and their relationships with the world. Psychedelic substances have the potential to show mindmanifesting properties under appropriate internally and externally supported conditions. They can offer lucid insights into ones psychological make-up and functioning. They are also capable of inducing a spectrum of inner experiences, sometimes
referred to as religious or mystical. Another commonly used term for these substances is hallucinogens, although this synonym is viewed as controversial because of the implication that they somehow cause hallucinations, which they do very rarely. Most psychedelic substances produce visual alterations of perceived objects and pseudohallucinations which are understood by the subject to be illusionary in character […]
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Brandt, S. D., & Passie, T. (2012). Research on psychedelic substances. Drug testing and analysis4(7-8), 539-542. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dta.1389
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Health status of ayahuasca users.

Abstract

Ayahuasca is a psychedelic brew originally used for magico-religious purposes by Amerindian populations of the western Amazon Basin. Throughout the last four decades, the use of ayahuasca spread towards major cities in all regions of Brazil and abroad. This trend has raised concerns that regular use of this N,N-dimethyltryptamine- and harmala-alkaloid-containing tea may lead to mental and physical health problems associated typically with drug abuse. To further elucidate the mental and physical health of ayahuasca users, we conducted a literature search in the international medical PubMed database. Inclusion criteria were evaluation of any related effect of ayahuasca use that occurred after the resolution of acute effects of the brew. Fifteen publications were related to emotional, cognitive, and physical health of ayahuasca users. The accumulated data suggest that ayahuasca use is safe and may even be, under certain conditions, beneficial. However, methodological bias of the reviewed studies might have contributed to the preponderance of beneficial effects and to the few adverse effects reported. The data up to now do not appear to allow for definitive conclusions to be drawn on the effects of ayahuasca use on mental and physical health, but some studies point in the direction of beneficial effects. Additional studies are suggested to provide further clarification.

Barbosa, P. C. R., Mizumoto, S., Bogenschutz, M. P., & Strassman, R. J. (2012). Health status of ayahuasca users. Drug testing and analysis, 4(7-8), 601-609. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dta.1383
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Quantitative Analysis of Narrative Reports of Psychedelic Drugs

Abstract

Background

Psychedelic drugs facilitate profound changes in consciousness and have potential to provide insights into the nature of human mental processes and their relation to brain physiology. Yet published scientific literature reflects a very limited understanding of the effects of these drugs, especially for newer synthetic compounds. The number of clinical trials and range of drugs formally studied is dwarfed by the number of written descriptions of the many drugs taken by people. Analysis of these descriptions using machine-learning techniques can provide a framework for learning about these drug use experiences.

Methods

We collected 1000 reports of 10 drugs from the drug information website Erowid.org and formed a term-document frequency matrix. Using variable selection and a random-forest classifier, we identified a subset of words that differentiated between drugs.

Results

A random forest using a subset of 110 predictor variables classified with accuracy comparable to a random forest using the full set of 3934 predictors. Our estimated accuracy was 51.1%, which compares favorably to the 10% expected from chance. Reports of MDMA had the highest accuracy at 86.9%; those describing DPT had the lowest at 20.1%. Hierarchical clustering suggested similarities between certain drugs, such as DMT and Salvia divinorum.

Conclusion

Machine-learning techniques can reveal consistencies in descriptions of drug use experiences that vary by drug class. This may be useful for developing hypotheses about the pharmacology and toxicity of new and poorly characterized drugs.

Coyle, J. R., Presti, D. E., Baggott, M. J. (2012). Quantitative Analysis of Narrative Reports of Psychedelic Drugs.
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Serotonergic Hallucinogens and Emerging Targets for Addiction Pharmacotherapies

Abstract

• Converging lines of evidence from pharmacologic, electrophysiologic, and behavioral
research in animals strongly suggest that activation of cortical 5-hydroxytryptamine-2A
receptors is the most critical step in initiating a cascade of biological events that accounts
for serotonergic hallucinogen (SH) psychoactive properties.
• Psilocybin produces hyperfrontality with divergent prefrontal–subcortical activation in such
a way as to increase cognitive and affective processing in the context of reduced gating
and reduced focus on external stimulus processing.
• In contrast to all other drugs of abuse, SHs are not considered to be capable of producing
sufficient reinforcing effects to cause dependence (addiction) syndromes.
• Given that SHs increase extracellular glutamate levels and activity in the prefrontal–
limbic circuitry, it is possible that a normalization in functional connectivity in this
network through a glutamate-dependent neuroplastic adaptation could produce an
anti-addictive effect.

Ross, S. (2012). Serotonergic hallucinogens and emerging targets for addiction pharmacotherapies. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 35(2), 357-374. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2012.04.002
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Healing our Deepest Wounds

grofhealing2Dr. Grof’s consciousness research over the last five decades has shown that the deepest roots of trauma often lie in experiences from birth or in events from human history that have not yet been resolved and are still active in the collective unconscious. This unresolved personal or collective history then expresses through an individual or group that has some connection to the earlier events. Traditional therapeutic approaches which focus only on events in the personal biography or tranquilizing medications do not access or heal these deeper wounds in the human psyche. From a more general perspective, Dr. Grof examines the broad problems of violence and greed in society and finds that the widespread fear and aggression between individuals and groups may also originate in large part from the unconscious acting-out of unresolved historical traumas from the collective unconscious. The message of Dr. Grof and this book is, however, a hopeful one: there are approaches to therapy which utilize a specific non-ordinary state of consciousness which enables individuals, with support, to access and heal these deeper levels of trauma from the personal and collective unconscious. He has named this state of consciousness Holotropic, a composite word which means “oriented toward wholeness” or “moving in the direction of wholeness” (from the Greek holos = whole and trepo, trepein = moving toward or in the direction of something). Dr. Grof describes various approaches to achieving this Holotropic state and using it for healing, with his focus on Holotropic Breathwork, which he developed with his partner Christina, and psychedelic therapy, which he pioneered in the 1950s and which is now experiencing a renaissance of clinical research for treatment of addictions and PTSD.

Healing Our Deepest Wounds: The Holotropic Paradigm Shift, door Stanislav Grof, Stream of Experience Productions, 276 pagina’s.

Koop dit boek via bookdepository.com en steun daarmee Stichting OPEN

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Psyche & Praxis Forum: Working at the Edge of Medicine and Mysticism - January 29