[In December 2024]; a [new] synergistic, multi-level understanding of psychedelics; a novel, synergistic understanding of psychedelics arising from systematic reviews and meta-analyses of three hierarchical levels of analysis: (1) subjective experience (phenomenology), (2) neuroimaging and (3) molecular pharmacology.

The Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) scale is one popular questionnaire that captures several of these subjective effects. It measures these states along five different dimensions… [however] the multiplicity of scales makes it difficult to comprehensively evaluate the literature on the phenomenology of psychedelics… dozens of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies have been performed on human participants under the influence of ayahausca, LSD, psilocybin and DMT, including several studies on depressed patients… although the consciousness-altering effects of psychedelics do primarily arise from their action at the 5-HT2A receptor, different psychedelics display different binding profiles. Another key aspect is their functional activity at receptors… [such as] G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCR)… Functional GPCR assays on psychedelics have tended to focus on the three aspects of GPCR signalling described above: (1) IP formation, (2) calcium mobilisation, and (3) β-arrestin (specifically β-arrestin2) recruitment.

Original Article (Nature):
Synergistic, multi-level understanding of psychedelics: three systematic reviews and meta-analyses of their pharmacology, neuroimaging and phenomenology
Artwork Fair Use: Ondřej Karlík