Interações - cultura e comunidade
June 23, 2026
Leonardo Tondato Mello, Kemily Bakri Ottoni, Janaína Liz Aquino
The global expansion of ayahuasca carries both creative and destructive potential for mental health, depending on the historical and social context of Indigenous peoples' exclusion and marginalization since the colonial period. Ongoing studies of ayahuasca's therapeutic effects indicate that proper management and interdisciplinary collaboration between ancestral knowledge and Western psychology/psychiatry are essential. The article concludes that a fair and respectful exchange with Indigenous knowledge is necessary to avoid predatory appropriation.
June 23, 2026
Carlos Minuano
Benki Piyãko, an Ashaninka leader in the Brazilian state of Acre, warns that the Amazon rainforest, which he calls one of the world's largest pharmacies, is being destroyed. This statement highlights multiple threats to the Amazon and underscores a growing debate about ayahuasca, an Indigenous psychedelic beverage considered a forest medicine.
June 21, 2026
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana, Yair Dor‐ziderman et al.
preprint
Ayahuasca use among ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews is adapted to Jewish contexts, with ceremonies modified to fit religious norms. Motivations for use are primarily therapeutic. Acute experiences include Jewish and Jewish mystical visionary content. Longer-term effects include strengthened belief, connection to Judaism, and changes in religious practice. Religious tensions arise from ayahuasca's perceived foreignness, concerns about idolatry, mixed-gender participation, and competing authority structures. Strategies to address these tensions include medicalization, making the set, setting, and experience religiously permissible ("koshering"), and framing ceremonies as liminal spaces. The findings highlight psychedelics' contextual flexibility and diffusion into understudied populations.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 20, 2026
Amos Jay Maley Maley
Consciousness is defined as a subject-indexed referential quotient interface where experiential records acquire unique, invariant, reusable referents. Qualia are classified as non-skin qualitative tensors—differences in qualitative profile that preserve standing while altering the complete qualitative/referential profile of the conscious interface. The paper argues that mechanisms like report, computation, global broadcast, integrated information, or neural correlates are insufficient alone to fix experiential reference. Artificial systems are not excluded by substrate but require full interface certification. Third-person evidence needs model-relative bridge certificates. The account treats consciousness as a fixed-domain admissibility interface and qualia as the non-skin qualitative tensors of that referentially fixed interface.
Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry
June 20, 2026
Ewen Kervadec, Pauline Mathieu, Baptiste Fauvel et al.
A French translation of the Altered States of Consciousness (5D-ASC) questionnaire was psychometrically validated using data from 777 participants who recalled a past naturalistic psychedelic experience. The 11-subscale structure showed better fit than higher-order models, though fit indices fell slightly below conventional thresholds. Internal consistency was excellent for global scores (α = 0.95) and satisfactory across subscales (α = 0.63–0.84). Measurement invariance across substance categories was confirmed, with latent factor differences aligning with known pharmacological profiles. The findings provide preliminary evidence supporting the French 5D-ASC's validity, enabling francophone research linking subjective experience to therapeutic outcomes.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 10, 2026
Guy W. Fincham, Edward Caddye, Amy A. Kartar et al.
A single session of high ventilation breathwork produced larger altered states of consciousness—including mystical experience, emotional breakthrough, and feelings of oneness—than body scan meditation in 24 healthy adults. One week later, breathwork was associated with greater psychological insight and self-reported behavioral change. Both groups showed improvements in stress, anxiety, depression, and well-being over time. These preliminary findings suggest breathwork can induce psychedelic-like effects and support further confirmatory research.
Psychodynamic psychiatry
June 1, 2026
Nadav Liam Modlin, Zsofia Elek, Carolina Maggio et al.
Psychedelic therapy may help people access unconscious mental content—preverbal, dissociated, or developmentally buried material—that emerges through bodily sensations, symbolic images, and intense emotions. A psychodynamic framework, drawing on psychoanalytic theory, can guide clinicians in working with this material across four phases: screening, preparation, the treatment session, and follow-up integration. Although neurobiological mechanisms like 5-HT2A receptor activation are well studied, unconscious processes remain underexplored. The authors argue that psychoanalytic models, though currently underrepresented, can deepen understanding of therapeutic change beyond symptom reduction and should inform future research, training, and individualized care as psychedelic treatments move toward broader clinical use.
Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & pharmacotherapie
June 1, 2026
Francisco Madrid-Gambin, Pablo Mallaroni, Noemí Haro et al.
The psychedelic state induced by ayahuasca arises from coordinated, system-level interactions between peripheral metabolism and brain network dynamics, rather than isolated neurochemical events. In 20 experienced ceremonial users, the subjective dimensions of oceanic boundlessness, visionary restructuralization, and auditory alterations covaried with circulating DMT and β-carbolines, shifts in lipid, amino acid, and energy metabolism, and reconfiguration of dorsal attention and default mode network connectivity. Shared features across these experiences were most strongly linked to endocannabinoid-related N-acylethanolamines, acylglycerols, and ceramides, extending beyond canonical serotonergic models to downstream lipid-signaling and metabolic processes. The findings offer translational insight into metabolic pathways that may modulate brain function and subjective response.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 1, 2026
Юр'єв Віктор Єгорович Viktor Yuriev
The human brain is an integrated neurovascular system where neurons, blood vessels, glial cells, and metabolism work together. Neurovascular coupling, the blood–brain barrier, and the glymphatic system support cognitive processes. The vasculome is proposed as an additional organizational level alongside the connectome. Current brain reconstruction approaches have limitations, leading to a Biological Non-Reproducibility Principle for complex self-organizing systems. A neurovascular limit of consciousness hypothesis suggests conscious experience depends on sustained energetic and metabolic integration, not just neural architecture. Reproducing the brain cannot be reduced to copying neuronal connections. This perspective reshapes understanding of consciousness continuity, personal identity, and future brain bioengineering.