Amanda Feilding

TL;DR: Preliminary support for the safety and efficacy of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression is provided and motivates further trials, with more rigorous designs, to better examine the therapeutic potential of this approach.

TL;DR: Psilocybin caused a significant decrease in the positive coupling between the mPFC and PCC, which strongly imply that the subjective effects of psychedelic drugs are caused by decreased activity and connectivity in the brain's key connector hubs, enabling a state of unconstrained cognition.

TL;DR: It is argued that the defining feature of “primary states” is elevated entropy in certain aspects of brain function, such as the repertoire of functional connectivity motifs that form and fragment across time, and that this entropy suppression furnishes normal waking consciousness with a constrained quality and associated metacognitive functions, including reality-testing and self-awareness.

TL;DR: Three complementary neuroimaging techniques, implemented during resting state conditions, revealed marked changes in brain activity after LSD that correlated strongly with its characteristic psychological effects, contributing important new insights into the characteristic hallucinatory and consciousness-altering properties of psychedelics.

TL;DR: Although limited conclusions can be drawn about treatment efficacy from open-label trials, tolerability was good, effect sizes large and symptom improvements appeared rapidly after just two psilocybin treatment sessions and remained significant 6 months post-treatment in a treatment-resistant cohort.