Science

The 25 biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2017

Number 24. Magic mushrooms can help with depression. Scientists put tripping patients into fMRI machines to observe what their brains did under the influence of psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic, “magic,” mushrooms. They found that patients with depression described feeling “reset” after a trip, and brain scans supported this conclusion. Patients who reported feeling…

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Some use LSD as brain boost, but dangers remain

Also in 2016, researchers at Imperial College London released what they say is the first modern brain imaging of people taking LSD. Researchers gave 20 people the drug and scanned their brains. They found that during the psychedelic state, volunteers processed information from many parts of their brain, not just the visual cortex as normally…

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…World’s first large-scale clinical trials in psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression

The trial will begin in the first quarter of 2018 and is planned to include clinical sites in Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the UK. COMPASS Pathways is a healthcare company, founded in 2015 to accelerate patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health. We are developing psilocybin therapy through…

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Clinical review: Psilocybin therapy could be significantly better than current psychiatric treatments

Thomas and his two colleagues, Benjamin Malcolm and Dan Lastra, came to this conclusion after reviewing seven clinical trials on psilocybin-assisted therapy. These previous studies were published over the past decade and examined cancer-related anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depressive disorders, and addiction. “This therapy has also demonstrated large effect sizes for improving symptoms on validated psychiatric…

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Is Kratom the CBD of opioids?

*Peace Monument in Washington D.C. Could Kratom be the CBD of the opiate world? … Ironically, the greatest danger of Kratom these days is from fake products contaminated with substances approved by the FDA. In rats, there was no observed toxicity following single, huge oral doses up to 806 mg/kg of [mitragyine]. (CBD is also…

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National expert: no cases show deaths solely from coffee-like herb kratom, which should be handled no differently than other substances

“…kratom… has not been linked to any known deaths, and the plant has little potential for abuse and dependence – as low or lower than such widely used (and federally unscheduled substances) as “nutmeg, hops, St. John’s Wort, chamomile, guarana, and kola nut.” -Dr. Henningfield* Dr. Henningfield previously served as chief of the Clinical Pharmacology…

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Posttreatment brain effects of psilocybin in patients with treatment-resistant depression

Changes in resting-state brain blood flow and functional connectivity following the use of psilocybin in patients with treatment-resistant depression have been documented for the first time, according to the results of a recent open-label UK study published in Scientific Reports. Investigators collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from patients with treatment-resistant depression in order…

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What LSD tells us about human nature

Healthy volunteers were injected with LSD while lying in an MRI scanner, and subjected to several other neuroimaging methods at the same time. This amounted to an arsenal of measurement that previous decades of psychedelic researchers could only dream of. ​Humans have gathered, cultivated, distilled, and manufactured all kinds of drugs for thousands of years.…

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Psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression: fMRI-measured brain mechanisms

This study was approved by the National Research Ethics Service (NRES) committee London – West London and was conducted in accordance with the revised declaration of Helsinki (2000), the International Committee on Harmonisation Good Clinical Practice (GCP) guidelines and National Health Service (NHS) Research Governance Framework. Imperial College London sponsored the research which was conducted…

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Mind-altering therapy : psilocybin therapy to combat depression

Spokesperson Tracey Cheung told us natural psilocybin extraction is difficult and expensive to produce to cGMP standards. “Given the urgent unmet need, Compass has chosen to synthesize psilocybin to expedite research and regulatory approval to bring this treatment to patients without unecessary delays,” she said. “We plan to extend research into extracts at a later…

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