Faithful readers will notice that we had a long hiatus here as I completed my dissertation and then recovered from the resulting snake-fight injuries. Meanwhile, the year 2010 saw a number of landmark papers and subtle shifts in the scientific terrain.
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Glenn Dumont and colleagues have an excellent new paper in social neuroscience showing that 100 mg MDMA increases oxytocin and prosocial feelings in people a controlled laboratory setting. It’s about time someone properly confirmed this theory!
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Pål Johansen and Teri Krebs have published a short Perspective paper hypothesizing three potential mechanisms by which MDMA might be helpful in anxiety disorders.
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In the UK, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has written a review of MDMA (‘ecstasy’), its harms and its legal classification.
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Here is a list of four human psychedelic studies that are currently recruiting participants. These are all seeking people with specific illnesses. Most of these details were obtained from ClinicalTrials.gov and maps.org
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Here are two human psychedelic studies that are currently no longer recruiting participants healthy psychedelic-experienced volunteers. (Full disclosure: I am involved in conducting both of these studies.) In a separate entry, I list the studies that are seeking people with specific illnesses who can be psychedelic-naive. Most of the details on these other studies were obtained from ClinicalTrials.gov and maps.org
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Dumont and colleagues have published a paper in which they describe the physiological effects of giving MDMA along with alcohol to people. One of the interesting things about this paper is that they measured plasma concentrations of antidiuretic hormone (ADH). (ADH is the hormone that causes the kidneys to conserve water, thus regulating the water balance in the body.)
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The Nature News piece on MDMA and PTSD (see my blog entry) wrote:
Did Nature News really just say that old reports don’t let us conclude MDMA psychotherapy works since maybe it was just the LSD?!
And in any case, isn’t the only citation for those Swiss data the MAPS newsletter?