Cell reports
July 22, 2025
George Blackburne, Rosalind G McAlpine, Marco Fabus et al.
10 citations
Inhaling a high dose of vaporized synthetic 5-MeO-DMT radically reorganizes low-frequency brain oscillations, making them heterogeneous, viscous, and nonrecurring, and halting their typical forward and backward travel across the cortex. This reorganization also causes broadband neural activity to become more stable and low-dimensional, with increased energy barriers for rapid global shifts. These findings, based on EEG data from 29 healthy individuals, provide a detailed account of how the drug sculpts human brain dynamics and reveal atypical cortical slow-wave behaviors relevant to neuroscientific models of serotonergic psychedelics.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 7, 2024
George Blackburne, Rosalind McAlpine, Marco S. Fabus et al.
8 citations
preprint
A high dose of the psychedelic drug 5-MeO-DMT radically reorganizes low-frequency brain activity in 29 healthy individuals. Inhaling 12 mg of vaporized synthetic 5-MeO-DMT caused neural activity flows to become incoherent, heterogeneous, viscous, fleeting, and nonrecurring, ceasing typical traveling waves across the cortex. This reorganization led to slower, more stable, low-dimensional broadband activity with increased energy barriers to rapid global shifts. The findings provide the first detailed empirical account of how 5-MeO-DMT alters human brain dynamics, revealing novel cortical slow wave behaviors.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews
July 1, 2026
Marcus J Glennon, Catherine I V Bird, Prateek Yadav et al.
2 citations
Setting up a psychedelic research study involves a long, arduous, and Kafkaesque process with many unstandardised challenges. These complexities challenge existing assumptions about psychiatric prescribing, the placebo effect, and definitions of selfhood. This review brings together major UK psychedelic research teams to formalise these unique considerations, addressing sociocultural, political, legal, pharmacological, safety, study design, and experiential facets. It identifies continuing areas of debate and provides a practical, experience-based guide with recommendations for policymakers and future researchers intending to set up a psychedelic study or clinical trial.
Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England)
May 23, 2026
Joanna Kuc, Rosalind G McAlpine, Amelia Sellers et al.
A short-acting psychedelic, 5-MeO-DMT, shifts speech from external focus to introspection. In 29 participants who kept daily voice journals two weeks before and after a single 12 mg dose, language analysis showed increased cognitive words and fewer social words, while vocal quality changed with more jitter and shimmer. Baseline speech patterns predicted how prepared people felt, the intensity of emotional breakthrough, and later well-being. This is the first longitudinal study showing that vocal journaling can track and predict psychological transformation around a psychedelic retreat, offering a framework for monitoring preparation and integration periods.
BMJ open
March 12, 2026
Rosalind McAlpine, Magdalena Jaglinska, Krisztina Jedlovszky et al.
A 21-day mobile-accessible programme called the Digital Intervention for Psychedelic Preparation (DIPP) is being tested for feasibility and preliminary efficacy in a randomised controlled trial. The study will recruit 40 non-treatment-seeking adults without a clinical diagnosis, randomly assigning them to either a guided meditation with music condition or a music-only condition. After the digital intervention, all participants will attend an in-person supervised psilocybin session with a standardised 25 mg dose. Primary outcomes include recruitment efficiency, retention, and adherence; secondary outcomes assess preparedness, quality of the psychedelic experience, and wellbeing, with follow-ups up to 9 months. The trial is registered as NCT06815653.
Open Science Framework
October 20, 2025
Natalia Fernandez-Vinson, Roger Atkins, Marcus Glennon et al.
This registered clinical study investigates whether N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), alone or combined with reactivating alcohol-related memories, can produce lasting changes in the brain, cognition, and drinking behavior in people with mild alcohol use disorder who are hazardous drinkers but not seeking treatment. Up to 120 participants will be assigned to one of four groups: alcohol memory retrieval plus DMT, alcohol memory retrieval plus placebo, control memory retrieval plus DMT, or control memory retrieval plus placebo. Drinking levels will be measured over three lab sessions and a nine-month follow-up using timeline follow-back and blood tests.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
August 22, 2025
Jeremy I Skipper, Daniel R Lametti, David W Green
preprint
Psychotic symptoms such as hearing voices or feeling that thoughts are inserted may arise from failures in the brain's prediction and self-monitoring systems. Normally, when people talk internally, the brain sends copies of motor commands to auditory regions and suppresses them, helping distinguish self-generated from external input. When this suppression malfunctions, predicted inner speech can become perceptually salient and misattributed as external. Neuroimaging meta-analyses showed that psychosis-spectrum participants had increased activity in motor-related regions for inner speech and decreased grey matter in auditory cortices and anterior cingulate cortex. These regions form inversely coupled networks, supporting a hierarchical predictive-processing account where disruption distorts self-awareness.