Journal of psychoactive drugs
January 1, 2023
Aviad Hadar, Jonathan David, Nadav Shalit et al.
93 citations
Psychedelics were used to treat psychiatric conditions before their prohibition in the late 1960s. Over the past three decades, research interest in their therapeutic potential has revived, with expected FDA approvals for various conditions. This bibliometric analysis characterized the top-cited 100 articles in the field, which were cited between 82 and 668 times (median 125; mean 158). Fifty-four percent of these articles were published in the last decade (2010-2020). Network and author impact analysis identified key figures and collaboration networks. The UK, USA, Switzerland, Spain, and Brazil lead the field. The findings facilitate research evaluation, data-driven funding policies, and a practical map for researchers and clinicians.
Frontiers in Psychiatry
December 19, 2023
Jonathan David, José Carlos Bouso, Maja Kohek et al.
14 citations
More than half of people who participate in ayahuasca ceremonies report having a subjective sense of death during the experience, termed Ayahuasca-induced Personal Death (APD). These experiences are typically strong and transformative, associated with an increased sense of transcending death and greater certainty that consciousness continues after death. APDs are not linked to demographics, personality, or psychopathology, but are associated with greater environmental concern, improved ability to cope with life problems, and a heightened sense of life fulfillment. The findings suggest these death experiences may be a mechanism for psychedelics' long-term positive effects.
Brain sciences
November 26, 2024
Yoav Schweitzer, Fynn-Mathis Trautwein, Yair Dor-Ziderman et al.
7 citations
Long-term meditators show enhanced low-level prosocial capacities, including better emotion recognition and reduced outgroup bias, compared to non-meditators. A neural index of self-boundary flexibility, measured via high beta deactivation, remained stable over a year and negatively correlated with recognizing negative emotions, suggesting a link to reduced social threat perception. The study involved 44 long-term meditators and 53 controls. These findings connect the neural correlates of self-boundary flexibility to prosociality, supporting the idea that flexing self-boundaries through meditation may enhance prosocial traits.
Psychopharmacology
April 23, 2025
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Yair Dor-Ziderman
2 citations
People who regularly use ayahuasca show lower death anxiety, less fear of death, less avoidant behavior around death, and greater acceptance of death compared to non-users. A cross-sectional study of 54 ayahuasca veterans and 53 non-users measured these differences using questionnaires and behavioral tasks. The differences were not explained by demographics, personality, mindfulness, beliefs about the afterlife, or awareness of impermanence. Instead, acceptance of impermanence—the willingness to embrace life's transience—was the key mechanism. Among ayahuasca users, the intensity of lifetime ego-dissolution experiences predicted how much they accepted impermanence. This suggests that acute psychedelic experiences can foster lasting changes in how people process mortality, and that promoting impermanence acceptance may help manage existential fear.
July 28, 2024
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana, Yair Dor‐ziderman
2 citations
preprint
People who have used ayahuasca multiple times show less fear of death, less avoidant behavior around death, and greater acceptance of death compared to non-users. A cross-sectional study of 54 ayahuasca veterans and 53 non-users found that these differences were explained not by personality, mindfulness, or beliefs about an afterlife, but by acceptance of impermanence—the recognition that all things change and pass away. Within the ayahuasca group, the degree of ego dissolution experienced during past ayahuasca sessions predicted how much they accepted impermanence, while how often they drank ayahuasca did not. The findings suggest that directly cultivating acceptance of impermanence could help manage existential anxiety.
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.
Psychopharmacology
November 10, 2025
Yair Dor‐ziderman, Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana
Preliminary evidence suggests that ayahuasca can change how people think about and feel toward death at conscious levels, but automatic, unconscious perceptual processes that deny death remain unaffected.
Frontiers in psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Jonathan David, José Carlos Bouso, Maja Kohek et al.
correction
A correction was issued for a published article: the average number of ayahuasca uses in the ayahuasca group was revised from 69.4 to 55.7 (standard deviation 82.1). Participants had used ayahuasca 5.2 times more than psilocybin, 4.6 times more than mescaline, and 5.6 times more than LSD. The authors state the error does not alter the scientific conclusions.
November 18, 2024
Yair Dor‐ziderman, Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana
preprint
Ayahuasca veterans' brains show automatic, unconscious denial of death when processing self-related death stimuli, measured via magnetoencephalogram (MEG), while their conscious self-reports indicate less fear of death than the general population and experienced meditators. The neurophysiological marker of death denial correlated with lower self-reported death acceptance, reduced accessibility to death-related thoughts, and greater life satisfaction, suggesting an adaptive role. Despite psychedelic-induced changes in conscious attitudes toward mortality, unconscious cognitive processes underlying mortality avoidance remain intact, limiting the transformative efficacy of psychedelics on deep-seated death denial.