The drug, heavily regulated alongside other hallucinogens, has shown promise for treating depression and PTSD, in ways that doctors still don't understand.
So scientists looked into microdosing, which involves regularly taking super-small doses of psychedelics, small enough not to trip, but enough to feel a positive mood boost.
Now, when you started doing hallucinogenics like LSD, did your hallucinations ever scare you because you'd seen your mother have hallucinations and delusions because of her mental illness?
科学快报-科学美国人2023Science Quickly, from SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 2023
On the other hand, when the mice were given cocaine—a psychoactive drug that increases general plasticity but is not a psychedelic—their critical period did not reopen.
科学快报-科学美国人2023Science Quickly, from SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 2023
These findings suggest that it's not just the psychedelics that are contributing to targeted changes in the brain but also what someone does while on the drugs.
科学快报-科学美国人2023Science Quickly, from SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 2023
She imagines future research using MDMA and other psychedelics to study everything from the fundamental components of positive relationships to whether it might be possible to shift someone's extremist views.
Many contemporary artists experiment with hallucinogens in the hope of creating work as mysteriously haunting as those verses of the Kubla Khan that Samuel Coleridge allegedly composed under the influence of laudanum.