Bridging the translational neuroscience gap: Development of the ‘shiftability’ paradigm and an exemplar protocol to capture psilocybin-elicited ‘shift’ in neurobiological mechanisms in autism
medRxiv May 26, 2023 Tobias P. Whelan, Eileen Daly, Nicolaas A.j. Puts et al. 3 citations preprint
Clinical trials for drugs targeting core autism features have failed, despite evidence linking various neurochemical systems to brain function in autism. The field has relied on association studies, but the only way to directly establish a neurotransmitter's role in a brain function is to experimentally change it and observe a shift. There is little direct experimental evidence on how neurochemical systems modulate information processing in the living human brain, limiting translation from animal studies. The authors introduce a "shiftability" paradigm to bridge this gap, using psilocybin as a pharmacological probe of the serotonin system in vivo. They present the protocol for 'PSILAUT', a study testing whether the serotonin system functions differently in autistic and non-autistic adults.