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- Timmermann, C., et al.
(författare)
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Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG
- 2019
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Studying transitions in and out of the altered state of consciousness caused by intravenous (IV) N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT - a fast-acting tryptamine psychedelic) offers a safe and powerful means of advancing knowledge on the neurobiology of conscious states. Here we sought to investigate the effects of IV DMT on the power spectrum and signal diversity of human brain activity (6 female, 7 male) recorded via multivariate EEG, and plot relationships between subjective experience, brain activity and drug plasma concentrations across time. Compared with placebo, DMT markedly reduced oscillatory power in the alpha and beta bands and robustly increased spontaneous signal diversity. Time-referenced and neurophenomenological analyses revealed close relationships between changes in various aspects of subjective experience and changes in brain activity. Importantly, the emergence of oscillatory activity within the delta and theta frequency bands was found to correlate with the peak of the experience - particularly its eyes-closed visual component. These findings highlight marked changes in oscillatory activity and signal diversity with DMT that parallel broad and specific components of the subjective experience, thus advancing our understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of immersive states of consciousness.
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- Lebedev, Alexander V., et al.
(författare)
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LSD-Induced Entropic Brain Activity Predicts Subsequent Personality Change
- 2016
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Ingår i: Human Brain Mapping. - : Wiley. - 1065-9471 .- 1097-0193. ; 37:9, s. 3203-3213
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Personality is known to be relatively stable throughout adulthood. Nevertheless, it has been shown that major life events with high personal significance, including experiences engendered by psychedelic drugs, can have an enduring impact on some core facets of personality. In the present, balanced-order, placebo-controlled study, we investigated biological predictors of post-lysergic acid diethylamide ( LSD) changes in personality. Nineteen healthy adults underwent resting state functional MRI scans under LSD ( 75 mu g, I. V.) and placebo ( saline I. V.). The Revised NEO Personality Inventory ( NEO-PI-R) was completed at screening and 2 weeks after LSD/placebo. Scanning sessions consisted of three 7.5-min eyes-closed resting-state scans, one of which involved music listening. A standardized preprocessing pipeline was used to extract measures of sample entropy, which characterizes the predictability of an fMRI time-series. Mixed-effects models were used to evaluate drug-induced shifts in brain entropy and their relationship with the observed increases in the personality trait openness at the 2-week follow-up. Overall, LSD had a pronounced global effect on brain entropy, increasing it in both sensory and hierarchically higher networks across multiple time scales. These shifts predicted enduring increases in trait openness. Moreover, the predictive power of the entropy increases was greatest for the music-listening scans and when ego-dissolution was reported during the acute experience. These results shed new light on how LSD-induced shifts in brain dynamics and concomitant subjective experience can be predictive of lasting changes in personality.
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- van den Brink, W., et al.
(författare)
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Efficacy and safety of sodium oxybate in alcohol-dependent patients with a very high drinking risk level
- 2018
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Ingår i: Addiction Biology. - : Wiley. - 1355-6215 .- 1369-1600. ; 23:4, s. 969-986
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Medication development for alcohol relapse prevention or reduction of consumption is highly challenging due to methodological issues of pharmacotherapy trials. Existing approved medications are only modestly effective with many patients failing to benefit from these therapies. Therefore, there is a pressing need for other effective treatments with a different mechanism of action, especially for patients with very high (VH) drinking risk levels (DRL) because this is the most severely affected population of alcohol use disorder patients. Life expectancy of alcohol-dependent patients with a VH DRL is reduced by 22 years compared with the general population and approximately 90000 alcohol-dependent subjects with a VH DRL die prematurely each year in the EU (Rehm et al. 2018). A promising new medication for this population is sodium oxybate, a compound that acts on GABA(B) receptors and extrasynaptic GABA(A) receptors resulting in alcohol-mimetic effects. In this article, a European expert group of alcohol researchers and clinicians summarizes data (a) from published trials, (b) from two new-as yet unpublished-large clinical trials (GATE 2 (n = 314) and SMO032 (n = 496), (c) from post hoc subgroup analyses of patients with different WHO-defined DRLs and (d) from multiple meta-analyses. These data provide convergent evidence that sodium oxybate is effective especially in a subgroup of alcohol-dependent patients with VH DRLs. Depending on the study, abstinence rates are increased up to 34 percent compared with placebo with risk ratios up to 6.8 in favor of sodium oxybate treatment. These convergent data are supported by the clinical use of sodium oxybate in Austria and Italy for more than 25years. Sodium oxybate is the sodium salt of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid that is also used as a recreational (street) drug suggestive of abuse potential. However, a pharmacovigilance database of more than 260000 alcohol-dependent patients treated with sodium oxybate reported very few adverse side effects and only few cases of abuse. We therefore conclude that sodium oxybate is an effective, well-tolerated and safe treatment for withdrawal and relapse prevention treatment, especially in alcohol-dependent patients with VH DRL.
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