Psilocybin-assisted Therapy

From Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Newsletter Fall 2021:


Last year, Dr. Frederick Barrett published a study that showed psilocybin reduced neural activity in the claustrum during the period of drug action.

The claustrum, once thought to be the seat of consciousness, is a thin sheet of gray matter in the brain that reaches out to every other region in the brain.

The results showed that both the default mode network and areas of the brain believed to be responsible for setting attention and switching tasks may be disrupted during the effects of psilocybin, and alterations in the claustrum may account for these changes.

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Podcast on Psychedelics

Podcast on psychedelics: the science, research, and medical implications with Dr. Fred Barrett.

Dr. Frederick Barrett is a cognitive neuroscientist with training in behavioral pharmacology. He has been conducting psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins University since 2013. He has explored the effects of psilocybin on the brain, the effects of LSD on the brain’s response to music, and is currently leading a number of ongoing studies aimed at better understanding the psychological, biological, and neural mechanisms underlying the therapeutic efficacy of psychedelic drugs.

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Psychedelics: Highs and Lows

There needs to be a bigger conversation on this:

Psychedelics are rapidly achieving the status of breakthrough therapies based on their potential for human development (Nutt, Erritzoe, & Carhart-Harris, 2020; Schenberg, 2018). At the same time, psychedelics may facilitate experiences of distressing or troubling revelations with unexpected or negative consequences to mental health.

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