Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
Researchers gave different psychedelic drugs to mice and found the drugs could reopen a window of brain plasticity used for learning social rewards. This reopened window went along with changes in a social hormone system in a key reward area of the brain and with changes in genes that control…
This paper suggests a new way to study how psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) might work. The authors propose that psychedelics could put the adult brain into a state similar to developmental "critical periods," times when the brain is highly sensitive to experience. They recommend using a well-studied visual system model (ocular…
This review explains how ketamine, a drug that blocks NMDA receptors, might work for people with treatment‑resistant depression. It says one injection of ketamine can rapidly reduce depressive symptoms, including acute suicidal behavior. The paper describes steps that could explain this: ketamine may raise glutamate, trigger growth of neuron branches,…
This small, exploratory study gave people with moderate to severe major depressive disorder placebo first (19 people) and then a single dose of psilocybin (0.3 mg/kg) to 15 people four weeks later, with all dosing embedded in therapy based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). After the psilocybin session, measures…
This paper is a review of recent research on psychedelic drugs. The authors say some clinical trials show these drugs can help people with post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse problems, and depression that has not improved with other treatments. But scientists do not yet understand all the biological ways these…
