Tim Hayward looks at the science, culture, history - and future - of psychedelics.

Shen et al. characterize protein signatures in the blood associated with social isolation and loneliness, demonstrating how these link social isolation and loneliness to an increased risk of disease a...

Within recent years, an increasing number of people and researchers in the Global North have become interested in psychedelic substances and their therapeutic application. While much of the current m...

The default mode network (DMN) is implicated in cognition and behavior. Here, the authors show that the DMN is cytoarchitecturally heterogeneous, it contains regions receptive to input from the sensory cortex and a core relatively insulated from environmental input, and it uniquely balances its output across sensory hierarchies.

Molecular Psychiatry - Psilocybin increases emotional empathy in patients with major depression

Oby, Degenhart, Grigsby and colleagues used a brain–computer interface to challenge monkeys to override their natural time courses of neural activity. They found the time courses to be highly robust, ...

Using a combination of fMRI, EEG, and phenomenology ratings, we examined the neurophenomenology of advanced concentrative absorption meditation, namel…

A new world-view is emerging, one which attempts to explain all manner of ills as the result of inflammation or immune dysfunction. While motivated by some

Various neuroscientific theories maintain that brain oscillations are important for neuronal computation, but opposing views claim that these macroscale dynamics are ‘exhaust fumes’ of more relevant processes. Here, we approach the question of whether oscillations are functional or epiphenomenal by distinguishing between measurements and processes, and by reviewing whether causal or inferentially useful links exist between field potentials, electric fields, and neurobiological events. We introduce a vocabulary for the role of brain signals and their underlying processes, demarcating oscillations as a distinct entity where both processes and measurements can exhibit periodicity. Leveraging this distinction, we suggest that electric fields, oscillating or not, are causally and computationally relevant, and that field potential signals can carry information even without causality.

DMT, “the nuclear bomb of the psychedelic family,” explained.