It’s been 2 months since the leading conference on psychedelic research in Europe, ICPR 2024, took place in Haarlem, the Netherlands. Despite having taken steps to integrate it all, the OPEN foundation team has accepted that we still lack the words to convey what the whole event felt like and meant to us.
Pia Dijkstra – Minister of Healthcare, The Netherlands – Opening ICPR 2024
From combating prejudice and stigma back in 2007 to having not one but two subsequent Ministers of Healthcare lining up to inaugurate ICPR, our mission to advance psychedelic research to benefit science, healthcare and society has come a long way.
At ICPR 2024, we had it all, from Minister from the Netherlands, Pia Dijkstra’s moving opening speech to the heartfelt realities shared by trial participants Maryam Zahra Jabir and Patty B., the Wet Blanket Award for presentations representing rigor and critical thinking’ awarded to Dr. Jamila Hokanson, M.D, MBA, the kind of deep thinking showcased by Leor Roseman, Erik Davis’ magnificent storytelling and accompanying visuals, the important discussions around decolonization curated by Yogi H., and so so so much more.
You might imagine why the OPEN Foundation & ICPR team was unable to attend most talks on-site. Yet, via the high-quality recordings (more on this will follow), we didn’t miss out. What we saw was consistently great.
Immense effort went into crafting ICPR’s mind-blowing programme. And no doubt those efforts have been worth it. ICPR embodied the true spirit of interdisciplinarity: from clinical trial design, neuroscience, archaeology, integration, psychotherapy, adverse events, spirituality, literary analysis—it was all there.
The programme and ICPR 2024 fulfilled their purpose: to gather and facilitate conversation and connection between open-minded, committed, curious, and caring individuals whose collective perspective creates a critical and constructive narrative for what psychedelics mean moving forward in 21st-century Europe.
Vibrant lunch breaks @ICPR
We are honored and humbled by the ICPR 2024, the progress in the field of psychedelic research and therapy, and what lies ahead. Lastly, gratitude. Gratitude, for our co-creation, persists. Fortunately so, as it’s our fuel to do our part in this ongoing process of integrating psychedelics safely and responsibly into healthcare and society.
Thank you, The OPEN & ICPR team
And please, a big applause for….. the rockstar volunteers who made ICPR 2024 possible!
Michiel van Elk, an associate professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Leiden, used to be very anti-drugs after growing up in a conservative Christian community. A psychedelic experience later in life put him on a path towards psychedelic research, and today he has an interdisciplinary approach to studying different aspects of the psychedelic experience – from a religious, neuroscientific, spiritual and cognitive to social scientific. An important part of Van Elk’s current work concerns the role of placebo effects in the psychedelic experience.
In previous research, he used a device ominously called the God Helmet. This helmet is essentially a sham brain-stimulation device: participants were made to believe that the helmet would stimulate their brain – potentially resulting in a mystical experience. In reality, it did nothing at all.
Many participants -indeed- reported having such a mystical experience while carrying the God Helmet. This result creates new questions around the role of the placebo effect in mystical experiences in general, and those induced by psychedelics in particular.
This idea is further supported by the ‘Tripping on Nothing’ study in which researchers made a concerted effort to reproduce the experimental context in which psychedelics tend to be administered, including ambient music, psychedelic paintings and color-changing lights. And there also many participants reported experiences usually associated with a medium to high dose of psilocybin (Olson et al., 2022) – even though they were given a placebo.
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Jasper: What is your perspective on the role of placebo effects in the psychedelic experience?
Michiel: I think that is still very much an open question. One perspective is that the effects of psychedelics are at least partially mediated by placebo effects, because people have expectations about these effects. Another is that psychedelics are essentially super placebos, by making people more suggestible – leading to a stronger placebo response.
Placebo research is an extensive, established field, including my own research with the God Helmet. We aim to integrate this field of study with research into the psychedelic experience: How do expectations influence the psychedelic experience? And how can psychedelics increase the placebo response?
Jasper: It seems there is still much to be discovered about the role of placebo effects in the psychedelic experience. Assuming this role is indeed there, do you think the beliefs of the researcher also play a role, in addition to those of the patient?
Michiel: Placebo effects are partially based on the perceived credibility of the experimenter. The experimenter doesn’t need to believe in certain effects himself, in order to be a credible source.
If I wear the placebo God Helmet myself, not much will happen. But if I give it to a participant and tell them about how it will stimulate their brain, something will happen.
This has to do with authority and suggestibility. What is important is that the participant believes the story, not so much the researcher himself. I do think this also underlies many psychiatric treatments: what matters is the meaning patients attribute to the treatment and their trust in the clinician, rather than the knowledge of the effect of neurotransmitters or SSRI’s.
Jasper: How would you research that? Would you provide different information to different participants? Or would you measure existing differences in expectations?
Michiel: That is indeed one option: to measure individual differences in existing beliefs. Simply asking participants what they think will happen before they take a psychedelic.
We plan to make it explicit by manipulating expectations about the dosage. We could keep the dosage constant but tell them it’s 5 grams one day and 10 grams the other.
Another manipulation is through framing, for example telling people the substance has strong visual effects, or that it induces mystical experiences. This is comparable to what smartshops [legal dispensaries of psychedelic sclerotia in the Netherlands] already do today.
Do people indeed have more ‘philosophical’, self-reflective trips if they take Philosopher’s stones compared to Hawaiian High truffles, if the packaging suggests so?
Jasper: One of the challenges, in my view, is that you can’t control what people read or have already heard about psychedelics – and how that affects people’s expectations. Is there a way to measure those beliefs and use them as a variable?
Michiel: In practice this is very difficult, because to include individual differences such as these, you need humongous sample sizes. In studies with placebo brain stimulation like with the God Helmet – where we place something on people’s heads that supposedly stimulates their brain, which in reality it does not – we do measure what these participants’ beliefs are regarding ‘brain stimulation’. Whether they believe it really exists, what they’ve read about it, etc. However, nothing consistent was ever found there!
Recently a paper in Nature argued convincingly that if you are interested in establishing a relationship between brain measure X and an individual difference measure Y – like the relation between personality and cognitive performance – you need thousands of participants to establish such an effect. This basically illustrates that in almost any study that has looked at the brain – behavior correlations are severely underpowered.
Jasper: That highlights the importance of open science practices like data sharing.
Michiel: Absolutely. What I would like to see more of is collaborative science, where many different institutions adhere to the same protocol and collect data together. Recent clinical trials with psychedelics successfully employed this model for the Phase II studies for example. However, when it comes to fMRI studies, we are currently not even close to this being a reality. Fortunately, recent attempts have been made to share data more, like analysis scripts between different institutions. That is an important and exciting step forwards!
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Jasper: Thank you for offering your thoughts on this topic. Lastly, I would like to ask you: What do you think the status of psychedelics will be in your field of cognitive psychology in the year 2032?
Michiel: Interesting question. I hope different psychedelics will be developed with a more clearly defined mechanism. For example a clearer neurotransmitter profile. Lsd and psilocybin stimulate the 5HT2A receptor but also have many different downstream pharmacological effects, making it difficult to attribute their effects to this receptor alone.
Ketanserin helps a lot already but psychedelics with greater specificity would make this much easier. In this context I also understand why experienced psychopharmacologists are a bit skeptical about psychedelics – pharmacologically speaking it is not a very ‘clean’ manipulation. However, that makes these substances so interesting at the same time as well!
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Recently, Jasper Lucas talked to Michiel in a wide-ranging conversation wide ranging discussion about issues surrounding the psychedelic science field. This is part two of their conversation. Van Elk runs the PRiSM lab at Leiden University, which studies psychedelic, religious, spiritual and mystical experiences, and has received a prestigious NWO (government) VIDI grant to study the effects of psychedelics. He is the author of the book ‘A sober look at psychedelics’ – available in Dutch – and is also a speaker at our upcoming conference ICPR 2022 .
If you’re interested in psychedelics, then you might have heard of the work of Robin Carhart-Harris, who conducted much of the most relevant research in the world of psychedelics together with his team at Imperial College in London.
In this look back at ICPR 2016 we will highlight the talk he held about his team’s trials with psychedelics-assisted psychotherapy, where he also showed some beautiful visuals of his team’s brain research, which happened to become some of the most famous psychedelic brain imagery known on the internet.
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Like our upcoming ICPR 2022 near Amsterdam, the edition in 2016 strove to bring together as many relevant studies from psychedelics as possible, and Carhart-Harris’ talk was most certainly a highlight. His research has been cited often and his talk was one of the best-watched from that year’s ICPR on our Youtube channel.
In his talk, Carhart-Harris talks about the results of his research – that psychedelics can cause a rise in cognitive flexibility, neuroplasticity, creative thinking, imaginative suggestibility, emotional lability, positive moods, and optimism.
He also touches on the idea of depressive realism, a trend he has seen in patients suffering from depression. He describes their depression as a “sort of delusion”, where his patients “don’t see the world as it really is. There is this really quite evident pessimism bias, that is normalised post-treatment with psilocybin.”
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A testimony of one of the participants is featured in the talk:
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26:35 — ‘Although it’s early days yet, the results are amazing. I feel more confident and calm than I have in such a long time. My outlook has changed significantly too, I’m more aware that it’s pointless to get wrapped up in endless negativity. I also feel as if I’ve seen a much clearer picture. [Now] I can enjoy things the way I used to, without the cynicism, without the oppression. At its most basic. I feel like I used to before the depression.”
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Brain Scans
One way to go about investigating psychedelics is by making fMRI brain scans. These scans are made of healthy and depressed individuals before, during and after a psychedelic experience. This way, the brain can be observed for changes.
Through these scans, the team got insights into the inner workings of the brain during psychedelic trips, and how they correlate with described experiences of volunteers, like ego-death. This is a type of experience in which people who are under the influence of psychedelics describe a certain loss of self, and a deeper connection with the wider universe or nature.
Carhart’s studies have highlighted that the Default Brain Network may be connected with our sense of self – our ego – and that the lower activity of this network during a psychedelic session may be associated with the occurrence of ego-death.
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Some of the brain scans from the research team at Imperial, from 2012.
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12:40 — “We see quite reliably a relationship between the magnitude of the disintegration and the default brain network. [..] The greater the disintegration of the default mode network, the greater our volunteers’ ratings of ego-dissolution. ”
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During the psychedelic experience induced with psilocybin, the parts of the brain associated with the Default Brain Network show a drastic reduction in activity, often creating the experience of ego-death. The compulsive activity of the Default Brain Network also has been associated with patients that scored higher in depression ratings.
Robin Carhart-Harris’s argument is that the Default Brain Network may be the source of what most adult people call the ‘ego’. This network is known as the Default Mode Network because, during our daily lives, this brain network becomes more active when we are idle.
The Default Mode is actually a really important part of our mental stability. This network is responsible for keeping our routines in check, making sure that our pending matters stay afloat, and that we’re not overlooking anything.
The mental activity generated by the Default Mode Network is usually stable and consistent day after day. This daily consistency in addition to the fact the DMN is the ‘standard’ mental voice, may contribute to the illusion that the Default Mode Network is the self.
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12:58 — [The Default Brain Network is]: “Arguably the best candidate we have for the neural substrates of the self, or the ego, or our identity and personality.” – Robert Carhart-Harris
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By analyzing the brains of participants who consumed psilocybin, Carhart’s team noticed that there was a process of renewal happening within the structure of the brain, almost like a general mind reset. This process of rebirth has been reported many times by psychedelic subjects.
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17:50 — “We can think of the mind or the brain is reset in the same way that you can think of a computer is malfunctioning and throwing up an error message and you are wondering what you can do. And then you press the reset button and it comes back working nice and smooth as it should.”
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In more recent years, Carhart-Harris has worked on building a more unified model of the workings of psychedelics in the brain. He founded the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College in London and focuses on the action of psychedelic drugs in the brain, and their clinical utility as aides to psychotherapy, with a particular focus on depression. He still studies the brain effects of LSD, psilocybin (magic mushrooms), and MDMA.
Robin Carhart-Harris will not be speaking at ICPR 2022, but his colleague and the new head of the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College will: David Nutt.
Notes about the author: Alexandre Perrella is a writer for Cabbanis!
Psychedelics appear to consistently produce long-lasting behavioural changes in the individuals who use them. Research focus has recently shifted to understand the accompanying changes in brain function and structure, which are hypothesised to occur through neuroplasticity. In this interview, Cato de Vos, MSc, explains what neuroplasticity is, how it can be measured in humans and animals, its importance in brain development, and the mechanisms by which psychedelic compounds and other practices can generate it.
Interviewee: Cato de Vos
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Over the past couple of decades, accumulating evidence has shown that psychedelics consistently produce strong subjective effects, often leaving a perennial imprint on the individuals ingesting them.
The subjective effects of the acute psychedelic experience are remarkable in and of themselves. At higher doses, they may occasion mystical-type experiences, considered by the individuals who have them as some of the most meaningful experiences of their lives, on par with one’s wedding day or the birth of a child. Perhaps even more remarkable are the sustained effects of these experiences on positive changes in attitudes and behaviours, lasting up to 14 months following the experience in one study.
Other studies have found similar long-lasting effects of these acute psychedelic experiences on depressive symptoms in patients with treatment-resistant depression, on smoking cessation in nicotine-dependent individuals, and on alcohol consumption in alcohol-dependent individuals. In each case, the quality of the acute psychedelic experience predicted the long-term changes from 6 to 12 months later.
It is clear from the available scientific literature that psychedelics have an important therapeutic potential that needs to be investigated, and that therapeutic outcome may be determined by the subjective psychedelic effects. As a neuroscientist however, it is challenging to consider long-term behavioural changes without any accompanying structural or functional brain alterations. These findings pose the following question: do psychedelics affect brain structure and/or function in a way that can lead to long-term changes? And if so, by which processes?
Cato M. H. de Vos holds an MSc in neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam. She currently works as a research-assistant at the mental health organisation 1nP in the Netherlands where she assists Dr. Heval Özgen and Gerard van Kesteren (PhD cand.) in several clinical trials investigating the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of MDMA-assisted therapy. Soon, she will also start a part-time study in Psychology to become a therapist. In September 2021, she published a systematic review in Frontiers in Psychiatry, with Natasha L. Mason, PhD., and Professor Kim P. C. Kuypers, PhD., from Maastricht University.
The aim of the paper was to review the evidence pertaining to psychedelics’ ability to induce molecular and cellular adaptations related to neuroplasticity, and to see whether they paralleled clinical effects. In total, 16 preclinical and 4 clinical studies were reviewed, revealing that a single administration of a psychedelic produced rapid, multi-level changes in plasticity-related mechanisms, including changes in the expression of BDNF, a neurotrophin involved in the growth, maturation, and maintenance of neurons.
Q&A with Cato de Vos, MSc.
Question 1. What is neuroplasticity? What is its role in brain development?
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change throughout life. These changes may occur in cell structure, known as structural plasticity, or in the efficacy of synaptic transmission, known as functional plasticity. An example of structural plasticity is dendritogenesis, where dendrites – the receiving end of neurons – expand, and an example of functional plasticity is synaptogenesis, where new synapses – neuronal junctions – are formed, enabling better communication between neurons.
Structural and functional plasticity are interconnected processes at a molecular and subcellular level, which eventually give rise to changes at the behavioural level. These changes allow your brain to adapt and change, promoting the ability to learn new things, enhancing your existing cognitive capabilities, supporting recovery from strokes and traumatic brain injuries, strengthening brain areas where functionality has been lost or has declined, and boosting brain fitness. However, neuroplasticity is a double-edged sword. Changes in the structure and function of the brain can confer adaptive benefits but can also lead to maladaptive disadvantages. To illustrate, misdirected activation of neuroplasticity can cause forms of severe tinnitus (‘ringing in the ears’) and neuroplasticity in the brain’s reward system induced by repeated use of certain drugs, such as cocaine, leads to more compulsive drug use. So the risk / benefit ratio also depends on the area where neuroplasticity is occurring.
For a long time researchers believed that the brain stopped developing during adolescence, and that there was a fixed number of neurons in the adult brain that could not be replaced when the cells died. In the 1960s, neurobiologist Joseph Altman discovered the creation of new neurons in the brain. His discovery was largely ignored, until the rediscovery of adult neurogenesis by Elizabeth Gould in 1999. Ensuing research on neurogenesis has since shown that the brain can change throughout life. Specifically the hippocampus, that part of the brain involved in spatial memory, learning processes and even emotion, continues to form new neurons throughout life. Thus, neuroplasticity is the process by which the brain can modify, change and adapt structure and function in response to the environment.
Question 2. How can neuroplasticity be measured?
There are different ways to measure neuroplasticity in animals and in humans, but it really depends on the level you’re looking at. Neuroplasticity occurs at different levels in the brain (molecular and cellular), involves communication between different brain regions (structural and functional), and eventually affects behaviour, so it depends on the particular area that is being studied. When looking at the molecular level, for example, certain protein levels can be measured. If certain proteins are more expressed than others, then you can infer that they play a bigger role in the process, which can be an indication of neuroplasticity, although it’s a fairly indirect measure.
At a cellular level, a microscope can be used to examine dendrites. If you see that neurons have progressively more elaborate dendrites, that they look like a tree with more branches than before, then you can assume dendritogenesis is at work.
This type of examination can be performed in animals, but is not as easy in humans, whose brains are not as easily available for research. An alternative is measuring the levels of certain proteins – like BDNF – in the blood and other parts of the body. With humans, unlike with animals, biological and psychological parameters can be combined, which enables you to investigate the relation between biological and behavioural changes. That’s one of the things that is lacking in animal research: you can’t ask a mouse how it’s feeling.
Question 3. By which mechanisms do psychedelics induce neuroplasticity?
The changes in neuroplasticity induced by psychedelics are believed to result from the neurobiological pathways they activate. Classic psychedelics act on a serotonergic receptor called “2A” (5-HT2AR). When psychedelics activate this receptor, specific pathways – cascades of different proteins communicating and transferring a signal – are activated. These cascades, or pathways, are different to non-psychedelic-induced activations of the same receptor.
Following the activation of these cascades, two neurotransmitter systems are activated: the inhibitory serotonergic system, and the excitatory glutamatergic system. The activation of these systems leads to the release of both serotonin and glutamate and subsequently, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a direct indicator of neuroplasticity. Indeed, high levels of BDNF in the brain are associated with increased neuroplasticity. Psychedelics also influence neuroplasticity indirectly, by affecting the transcription of plasticity-related genes and proteins, which modulates the expression of other genes and proteins involved in neuroplasticity.
Not every study shows that psychedelic administration necessarily stimulates neuroplasticity. It’s therefore not possible to say that it always happens, but there are some good indications that it does. There is also a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the molecular mechanisms I mentioned because measuring molecular cascades is very challenging, so more research is needed to draw definite conclusions.
Question 4. Have the clinical findings in humans mirrored the preclinical findings in animals so far ?
It’s hard to compare the two. Since different techniques are used to investigate humans and animals, making any comparison is like comparing apples and oranges. They both have their pros and cons.
Clinical research can investigate both the biological and psychological parameters, which is good because you can then investigate correlations between the two. I believe the psychological state is important if you want to be able to observe improvements in the state of a patient, but it’s more difficult to measure direct biological parameters such as cerebrospinal fluid BDNF, like you can in animals. There are many translational issues, which is why we need to keep combining clinical and pre-clinical research, and be mindful of these limitations.
Question 5. Can neuroplasticity alone be therapeutic? What are your thoughts on psychedelic-inspired, neuroplasticity-inducing compounds like TBG, that lack the subjective effects of classic psychedelics?
Personally I am somewhat sceptical about not having the hallucinogenic effects in the context of therapy, but I think it really depends on the reason for psychedelic therapy, because there is a difference between using it for cluster headaches, or PTSD and depression. I believe you need to look at the origin and underlying layers or deep processes within yourself, within your system, that could cause these pathologies which are different in each of these cases. Cluster headaches might be solved with non-hallucinogenic neuroplasticity-inducing compounds, but for the psychiatric disorders – PTSD and depression for example – which are often accompanied by deep-rooted psychological issues, the hallucinogenic effects may be very important. In those cases the peak subjective experience might be necessary, as has already been shown in some studies: the stronger the psychedelic experience, the better the therapeutic outcome.
That said, I believe that everything is connected – mind and body – and we’re so conditioned to be in our heads and not be aware of what’s going on in our bodies. I feel that psychedelics can restore some of this connection, on a psychological level. Perhaps the hallucinogenic effects may also have a positive impact on cluster headaches. David Olson’s work with TGB is great in that he is making psychedelics accessible to a bigger audience. A lot of people are excluded from clinical trials because they have a history or family history of certain conditions, and they don’t have access to therapy at all, so this could be a very good thing.
Question 6. Any additional thoughts on neuroplasticity and psychedelics ?
Bear in mind that neuroplasticity can be stimulated by other means, such as taking good care of yourself, engaging in physical activity, meditation, eating healthy food and getting enough sleep. All these can be beneficial and contribute to positive treatment outcomes. We also want to be cautious here, because we don’t know when neuroplasticity stops being a good thing. I believe everything is about balance, so it is good to remain critical. As my colleague Erwin Krediet once said to me: “A plant doesn’t survive when you give it fertiliser every day, it’s too much.”
Background: Ketamine’s potent and rapid antidepressant properties have shown great promise to treat severe forms of major depressive disorder (MDD). A recently hypothesized antidepressant mechanism of action of ketamine is the inhibition of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor-dependent bursting activity of the habenula (Hb), a small brain structure that modulates reward and affective states.
Methods: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted in 35 patients with MDD at baseline and 24 hours following treatment with i.v. ketamine. A seed-to-voxel functional connectivity (FC) analysis was performed with the Hb as a seed-of-interest. Pre-post changes in FC and the associations between changes in FC of the Hb and depressive symptom severity were examined.
Results: A reduction in Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale scores from baseline to 24 hours after ketamine infusion was associated with increased FC between the right Hb and a cluster in the right frontal pole (t = 4.65, P = .03, false discovery rate [FDR]-corrected). A reduction in Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology-Self Report score following ketamine was associated with increased FC between the right Hb and clusters in the right occipital pole (t = 5.18, P < .0001, FDR-corrected), right temporal pole (t = 4.97, P < .0001, FDR-corrected), right parahippocampal gyrus (t = 5.80, P = .001, FDR-corrected), and left lateral occipital cortex (t = 4.73, P = .03, FDR-corrected). Given the small size of the Hb, it is possible that peri-habenular regions contributed to the results.
Conclusions: These preliminary results suggest that the Hb might be involved in ketamine’s antidepressant action in patients with MDD, although these findings are limited by the lack of a control group.
Rivas-Grajales, A. M., Salas, R., Robinson, M. E., Qi, K., Murrough, J. W., & Mathew, S. J. (2021). Habenula Connectivity and Intravenous Ketamine in Treatment-Resistant Depression. The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology, 24(5), 383–391. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijnp/pyaa089
Depression is a widespread and devastating mental illness and the search for rapid-acting antidepressants remains critical. There is now exciting evidence that the psychedelic compound psilocybin produces not only powerful alterations of consciousness, but also rapid and persistent antidepressant effects. How psilocybin exerts its therapeutic actions is not known, but it is widely presumed that these actions require altered consciousness, which is known to be dependent on serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2AR) activation. This hypothesis has never been tested, however. We therefore asked whether psilocybin would exert antidepressant-like responses in mice and, if so, whether these responses required 5-HT2AR activation. Using chronically stressed male mice, we observed that a single injection of psilocybin reversed anhedonic responses assessed with the sucrose preference and female urine preference tests. The antianhedonic response to psilocybin was accompanied by a strengthening of excitatory synapses in the hippocampus-a characteristic of traditional and fast-acting antidepressants. Neither behavioral nor electrophysiological responses to psilocybin were prevented by pretreatment with the 5-HT2A/2C antagonist ketanserin, despite positive evidence of ketanserin’s efficacy. We conclude that psilocybin’s mechanism of antidepressant action can be studied in animal models and suggest that altered perception may not be required for its antidepressant effects. We further suggest that a 5-HT2AR-independent restoration of synaptic strength in cortico-mesolimbic reward circuits may contribute to its antidepressant action. The possibility of combining psychedelic compounds and a 5-HT2AR antagonist offers a potential means to increase their acceptance and clinical utility and should be studied in human depression.
Hesselgrave, N., Troppoli, T. A., Wulff, A. B., Cole, A. B., & Thompson, S. M. (2021). Harnessing psilocybin: antidepressant-like behavioral and synaptic actions of psilocybin are independent of 5-HT2R activation in mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(17), e2022489118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022489118
Creativity is an essential cognitive ability linked to all areas of our everyday functioning. Thus, finding a way to enhance it is of broad interest. A large number of anecdotal reports suggest that the consumption of psychedelic drugs can enhance creative thinking; however, scientific evidence is lacking. Following a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group design, we demonstrated that psilocybin (0.17 mg/kg) induced a time- and construct-related differentiation of effects on creative thinking. Acutely, psilocybin increased ratings of (spontaneous) creative insights, while decreasing (deliberate) task-based creativity. Seven days after psilocybin, number of novel ideas increased. Furthermore, we utilized an ultrahigh field multimodal brain imaging approach, and found that acute and persisting effects were predicted by within- and between-network connectivity of the default mode network. Findings add some support to historical claims that psychedelics can influence aspects of the creative process, potentially indicating them as a tool to investigate creativity and subsequent underlying neural mechanisms. Trial NL6007; psilocybin as a tool for enhanced cognitive flexibility; https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/6007 .
Mason, N. L., Kuypers, K., Reckweg, J. T., Müller, F., Tse, D., Da Rios, B., Toennes, S. W., Stiers, P., Feilding, A., & Ramaekers, J. G. (2021). Spontaneous and deliberate creative cognition during and after psilocybin exposure. Translational psychiatry, 11(1), 209. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01335-5
The interest in lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) has sparked again due to its supposed positive effects on psychopathological conditions. Yet, most research focuses on the actions of LSD on the central nervous system. The interaction with the autonomic nervous system (ANS) has been neglected so far. Therefore, the aim was to assess the effects of LSD and the serotonin 2A receptor antagonist ketanserin on the ANS as assessed by heart rate variability (HRV) measures and their correlation with subjective drug-induced effects in a randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trial. Thus, ANS activity was derived from electrocardiogram recordings after intake of placebo, LSD or ketanserin, and LSD by calculating R-peak-based measures of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity. Repeated measure ANOVA and partial correlation for HRV measures and subjective experience questionnaires were performed. LSD predominantly increased sympathetic activity, while ketanserin counteracted this effect on the ANS via an increase of parasympathetic tone. Sympathetic activity was positively and parasympathetic activity negatively associated with psychedelic effects of LSD. Furthermore, Placebo HRV measures predicted subjective experiences after LSD intake. The association between trait ANS activity and LSD-induced subjective experiences may serve as a candidate biomarker set for the effectiveness of LSD in the treatment of psychopathological conditions.
Olbrich, S., Preller, K. H., & Vollenweider, F. X. (2021). LSD and ketanserin and their impact on the human autonomic nervous system. Psychophysiology, 58(6), e13822. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13822
Psychedelic drugs are increasingly being incorporated into therapeutic contexts for the purposes of promoting mental health. However, they can also induce adverse reactions in some individuals, and it is difficult to predict before treatment who is likely to experience positive or adverse acute effects. Although consideration of setting and dosage as well as excluding individuals with psychotic predispositions has thus far led to a high degree of safety, it is imperative that researchers develop a more nuanced understanding of how to predict individual reactions. To this end, the current systematic review coalesced the results of 14 studies that included baseline states or traits predictive of the acute effects of psychedelics. Individuals high in the traits of absorption, openness, and acceptance as well as a state of surrender were more likely to have positive and mystical-type experiences, whereas those low in openness and surrender or in preoccupied, apprehensive, or confused psychological states were more likely to experience acute adverse reactions. Participant sex was not a robust predictor of drug effects, but 5-HT2AR binding potential, executive network node diversity, and rACC volume may be potential baseline biomarkers related to acute reactions. Finally, increased age and experience with psychedelics were individual differences related to generally less intense effects, indicating that users may become slightly less sensitive to the effects of the drugs after repeated usage. Although future well-powered, placebo-controlled trials directly comparing the relative importance of these predictors is needed, this review synthesizes the field’s current understanding of how to predict acute reactions to psychedelic drugs.
Aday, J. S., Davis, A. K., Mitzkovitz, C. M., Bloesch, E. K., & Davoli, C. C. (2021). Predicting Reactions to Psychedelic Drugs: A Systematic Review of States and Traits Related to Acute Drug Effects. ACS pharmacology & translational science, 4(2), 424–435. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsptsci.1c00014
Background: The reticular thalamus gates thalamocortical information flow via finely tuned inhibition of thalamocortical cells in the mediodorsal thalamus. Brain imaging studies in humans show that the psychedelic lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) modulates activity and connectivity within the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) circuit, altering consciousness. However, the electrophysiological effects of LSD on the neurons in these brain areas remain elusive.
Methods: We employed in vivo extracellular single-unit recordings in anesthetized adult male mice to investigate the dose-response effects of cumulative LSD doses (5-160 µg/kg, intraperitoneal) upon reticular thalamus GABAergic neurons, thalamocortical relay neurons of the mediodorsal thalamus, and pyramidal neurons of the infralimbic prefrontal cortex.
Results: LSD decreased spontaneous firing and burst-firing activity in 50% of the recorded reticular thalamus neurons in a dose-response fashion starting at 10 µg/kg. Another population of neurons (50%) increased firing and burst-firing activity starting at 40 µg/kg. This modulation was accompanied by an increase in firing and burst-firing activity of thalamocortical neurons in the mediodorsal thalamus. On the contrary, LSD excited infralimbic prefrontal cortex pyramidal neurons only at the highest dose tested (160 µg/kg). The dopamine D2 receptor (D2) antagonist haloperidol administered after LSD increased burst-firing activity in the reticular thalamus neurons inhibited by LSD, decreased firing and burst-firing activity in the mediodorsal thalamus, and showed a trend towards further increasing the firing activity of neurons of the infralimbic prefrontal cortex.
Conclusion: LSD modulates firing and burst-firing activity of reticular thalamus neurons and disinhibits mediodorsal thalamus relay neurons at least partially in a D2-mediated fashion. These effects of LSD on thalamocortical gating could explain its consciousness-altering effects in humans.
Inserra, A., De Gregorio, D., Rezai, T., Lopez-Canul, M. G., Comai, S., & Gobbi, G. (2021). Lysergic acid diethylamide differentially modulates the reticular thalamus, mediodorsal thalamus, and infralimbic prefrontal cortex: An in vivo electrophysiology study in male mice. Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 35(4), 469–482. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881121991569
