American Journal of Psychiatry
January 1, 2025
Noam Goldway, Snehal Bhatt, Stephen Ross et al.
23 citations
Psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT) produced lasting changes in personality, indicating a normalization of abnormal personality trait expression in people with alcohol use disorder. The findings suggest that PAT may reduce impulsiveness, or that impulsive individuals may inherently respond better to the therapy. Further research is needed to clarify the mechanism.
Psychedelic Med (New Rochelle)
December 13, 2023
Kelley C. O'Donnell, Daniel E. Roberts, Terence H.W. Ching et al.
13 citations
The term 'psychedelic' carries multiple, sometimes conflicting, meanings across different contexts—scientific, cultural, legal, and historical. This ambiguity can hinder clear communication and slow research progress by creating misunderstandings among researchers, clinicians, policymakers, and the public. The authors argue that recognizing and clarifying these varied definitions is essential for advancing the field, as precise language helps align expectations, improve study reproducibility, and inform policy decisions. Without shared understanding, efforts to study and apply psychedelics therapeutically risk confusion and fragmentation.
Journal of fluency disorders
September 1, 2024
Eric S Jackson, Noam Goldway, Hope Gerlach-Houck et al.
4 citations
Stuttering affects social, occupational, and educational functioning. Traditional therapies have limited effectiveness, and no FDA-approved pharmaceutical treatments exist. Interest in classic psychedelics (psilocybin, LSD) for conditions like anxiety and depression has grown, but their effects on stuttering were unexplored. This analysis of 114 Reddit posts from self-identified stutterers who used psychedelics found that 74.0% reported positive short-term effects, including reduced stuttering and anxiety. However, 9.6% reported negative effects, 4.8% mixed, and 11.6% neutral. The uncontrolled setting and potential adverse health effects require caution; results do not encourage use but suggest future controlled research.
Int Rev Psychiatry
September 11, 2024
Mary E. Yaden, Terence H. W. Ching, Noam Goldway et al.
2 citations
A survey of US psychiatry residency training directors found that most (64%) favor adding more time for psychedelic education, yet many worry about a lack of educational materials (54%) and limited faculty to teach the content (46%). Almost all programs (94%) expressed some interest in a standardized curriculum in psychedelic medicine. Training directors recognize current offerings are limited and want more support to meet the coming demand for education in this emerging field.
Biological psychiatry global open science
March 1, 2026
Noam Goldway, Taly Markovits, Naomi Fine et al.
1 citation
Dissociation—feeling detached from one's body, environment, or self—often accompanies posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but its neural basis is poorly understood. Using network control theory on resting-state functional MRI data, researchers examined brain dynamics during dissociative states in healthy volunteers given ketamine (n=30) and in PTSD patients (n=78) before and after treatment. Ketamine induced brain dynamics similar to those in untreated PTSD patients: increased dominance of the default mode network (DMN) meta-state and decreased dominance of the somatomotor network (SOM) meta-state. After treatment, reduced DMN meta-state dominance correlated with fewer dissociative symptoms. Treated patients also showed more organized, less entropic brain states, though ketamine did not significantly alter entropy indices. Dissociative states, whether drug-induced or clinical, involve increased DMN and reduced SOM dominance.
Noam Goldway, Taly Markovits, Naomi Fine et al.
preprint
Dissociation—feeling detached from one's body, surroundings, or self—is common in PTSD but its neural basis is poorly understood. Using network control theory, researchers examined brain dynamics during dissociative states in two contexts: ketamine-induced dissociation in 30 healthy volunteers and therapeutic interventions in 78 PTSD patients. Ketamine produced brain dynamics similar to those seen in PTSD patients before treatment, with increased dominance of a default mode network meta-state and decreased dominance of a somatomotor meta-state. Ketamine did not significantly alter the brain's energetic landscape, but transition energies increased after PTSD treatment, suggesting more organized, less entropic brain dynamics.
Neuropsychopharmacology
July 20, 2026
Noam Goldway, Itamar Jalon, Yara Agbaria et al.
Ketamine produces both pain relief and dissociation, but it remains unclear whether the two are linked. In a placebo-controlled fMRI study with 37 healthy volunteers, intravenous ketamine reduced pain and induced dissociation, yet the two effects showed distinct brain signatures. Pain was associated with activity in regions like the anterior insula and a pain-predictive brain pattern, while dissociation was linked to reduced connectivity in the default mode network. These neural markers did not correlate with each other, suggesting that ketamine's analgesic and dissociative effects arise through separate mechanisms.