Scientific Reports
December 8, 2025
Amrit Baral, Yue Pan, Wayway M. Hlaing et al.
Among older U.S. men, those who reported lifetime use of classic psychedelics alone had more than two and a half times the odds of a prostate cancer diagnosis compared with non-users, after adjusting for demographic, behavioral, and clinical factors. In men aged 65 or older, the odds were more than three and a half times higher. The analysis used nationally representative survey data from 2015–2019, covering 19,460 men aged 50 and older. Cannabis-only use and co-use of cannabis and psychedelics did not show a significant association. The authors suggest further research is needed to understand possible reasons and biological mechanisms behind this link.
Scientific Reports
October 28, 2025
Sacha Haudry, Natacha Lambert, Christian Gaser et al.
Older adults with more than 20 years of meditation experience have a younger predicted brain age compared to cognitively unimpaired older adults without such expertise, as measured by a machine learning model trained on brain structure and metabolism data. The difference in brain age was linked to total meditation hours, mental imagery, and prosocialness. However, an 18-month meditation training program did not produce a significant effect on brain age, suggesting that long-term, sustained practice may be necessary to support healthy brain aging.
Scientific Reports
May 27, 2025
Faiz Mohammed Kassim, Alexander J. W. Davey, Sophie Tod et al.
A synthetic cannabinoid agonist, nabilone, reduces the tactile funneling illusion—a phenomenon where two simultaneous touches on the skin are perceived as a single sensation in between. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial with 32 healthy participants, nabilone decreased the illusion in a delay-dependent manner, particularly when stimuli were delivered simultaneously (0 ms delay). It also reduced errors in localizing touches in a distance-dependent way. The drug increased ratings on two of five psychometric scales but did not change overall scores. Associations between overall psychometric scores and the illusion under the strongest condition depended on the drug. Unlike dexamphetamine, which widens stimulus binding windows, nabilone narrows them, reducing illusory perception.
Scientific Reports
April 23, 2024
Berit Singer, Daniel Meling, Matthias Hirsch-Hoffmann et al.
No Summary
Scientific Reports
March 1, 2021
Juliana Yordanova, Vasil Kolev, Valentina Nicolardi et al.
Meditation practice engages cognitive control systems in the brain. Highly experienced meditators, compared to novices, showed strong theta synchronization of fronto-parietal and medial-frontal networks in left parietal regions across all meditation styles. Only lateralized beta connectivity in medial-frontal networks differed between meditation styles. Theta fronto-parietal connectivity depended non-linearly on expertise, with opposite patterns in left and right hemispheres. Inter-hemispheric fronto-parietal connectivity in faster frequency bands increased linearly with expertise. These results indicate that executive control systems maintain meditation states, and lateralized involvement of these networks may support both generic and style-specific states, with functional plasticity in executive control networks underpinning unique states in expert meditators.
Scientific Reports
April 10, 2023
Najme Soleimani, Kamran Kazemi, Mohammad Sadegh Helfroush et al.
Cannabis users show altered local brain network properties in the insular, frontal opercular, and temporal cortices, while their overall brain network organization remains intact. In a comparison of 73 cannabis users (age 22–36, 19 female) and 73 healthy controls (age 22–36, 14 female) using resting-state fMRI and diffusion-weighted imaging, differences were prominent in local structural and functional connectivity measures such as degree and clustering coefficient. Global network measures did not differ between groups. Associations between network measures and times used cannabis were mostly insignificant after correction, except for a link between degree and usage in the presubiculum region.
Scientific Reports
February 25, 2020
D. Vatansever, Manuel S. Schröter, R. Adapa et al.
Patterns of functional interactions across distributed brain regions are thought to provide a scaffold for conscious processing, with topological changes seen in loss of consciousness. Using resting-state fMRI in healthy participants at baseline and two levels of propofol-induced sedation, the study found a persistent modular brain architecture but significant reorganization of brain hubs that formed parts of a wider rich-club collective. Reduced strength of rich-club connectivity was significantly associated with poorer performance on a semantic judgment task, highlighting the importance of this higher-order topological feature for conscious cognition.