Nootropic effects of LSD: Behavioral, molecular and computational evidence.
Experimental Neurology June 1, 2022 I. Ornelas, F. A. Cini, Isabel Wießner et al. 37 citations
LSD treatment improved performance in a novel object recognition task in rats and a visuo-spatial memory task in humans. A proteomic analysis of human brain organoids showed that LSD affected metabolic pathways associated with neural plasticity, including mTOR. Simulations using a neural network model of a cortico-hippocampal circuit, with baseline plasticity strength as a proxy for age and increased plasticity related to LSD dose, fit the experimental data well. The results suggest that LSD has nootropic effects.