A new study suggests that four psychoactive compounds work in surprisingly similar ways, and that they break down the separation between how we think internally and how we perceive the outside world

Lawmakers are clearing the way for use of the psychedelic mushroom compound psilocybin as a potential medical treatment, once a formulation is approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Founders of the Integrative Psychiatry Institute, Dr. Will Van Derveer and Keith Kurlander, discuss their new book, Psychedelic Therapy: A Revolutionary Approach to Restoring Mental Health and Reclaiming Your Life.

Scientists looked at a wide range of brain scans to determine how consciousness gets so trippy on mind-altering drugs.

Researchers created a new questionnaire to measure major life changes linked to psychedelic use and found that most surveyed adults reporting naturalistic psychedelic use said psychedelics had influenced at least one major change in their lives.

An analysis of hundreds of images from several studies shows how hallucinogenic drugs drive activity in various regions of the brain.

The largest analysis of psychedelic brain imaging to date offers a clearer picture of how psychedelic drugs affect the brain.

In psychedelic studies, placebo groups often improve less, partly because participants may realize they did not receive the drug. In antidepressant trials, placebo groups tend to improve more, possibly because more placebo recipients believe they received the active therapy. This difference can make psychedelics appear more effective.

With one approved drug (Johnson & Johnson’s Spavaro) already doing $468 million per quarter in sales, and with companies like AbbVie and Otsuka paying hundreds of millions in M&A, it’s safe to say that psychedelics haven’t been fringe science for a while.

Explore how psychedelics and meditation reveal the brain's construction of self, influencing our acceptance of change and mortality.

News and commentary from the psychiatry world

The largest brain imaging analysis of psychedelics to date, recently published in Nature Medicine, has identified two patterns of brain activity that appear across five different drugs.