Reply to "Capturing Synergy Holistically in Psychedelic Clinical Trials".
Clin Pharmacol Ther January 2, 2024
The authors respond to commentary on their article about synergy in clinical trials of psychedelics combined with psychotherapy. They maintain that synergy is properly defined as the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, determined by effects on quantitative outcomes, not as a process. They argue that once synergy is demonstrated, examining its mechanisms becomes important. They propose that psychedelics and psychotherapy may mutually reinforce each other through increased neuroplasticity and psychosocial processes like openness to change. They emphasize three principles for designing informative, unbiased, and reproducible psychedelic trials, warning against hype and uninformative results.