Lukas A. Basedow, PhD

1. ITT vs. actually received treatment: important discussion which still needs to be done for the pediatric antidepressant (TADS) trial regarding rates of treatment emergent suicidality.
Fluoxetine vs. placebo: ITT: 15 vs. 11%, n.s.
Actually treated with fluoxetine: 11% vs. 2.7% (p < 0.02)

Time for a middle of the week cut. Will continue on sunday 😎

The Research Deficit and Expert Disagreement Regarding Music Selection for Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Prior research has determined that music plays a central role in psychedelic assisted therapy (PAT). While there is a general consensus of the importance of music during PAT, there are only three empi...

Way less research on this than I suspected! Time for more science.
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Dopamine dynamics during stimulus-reward learning in mice can be explained by performance rather than learning - Nature Communications VTA dopamine activity control movement-related performance, not reward prediction errors. Here, authors show that behavioral changes during Pavlovian learning explain DA activity regardless of reward ...

From social science back to hardcore neuroscience. In my (limited) understanding this proposes a fresh look on the function of dopamine signaling.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Evaluating the Brain Disease Model of Addiction This ground-breaking book advances the fundamental debate about the nature of addiction. As well as presenting the case for seeing addiction as a brain disease, it brings together all the most cogent ...

Some great additional ressources regarding discussions of the nature of addiction. This handbook: tinyurl.com/ycyc7hhe

The work by Marc Lewis: www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/237880...

And the work by Hanna Pickard, who has just published a new book with a great title: tinyurl.com/bded72w2

The nosology of addiction as a medical condition: a concise history and review of contemporary perspectives - Neuropsychopharmacology Neuropsychopharmacology - The nosology of addiction as a medical condition: a concise history and review of contemporary perspectives

A great companion piece to the previous paper. Comprehensively outlines the history of addiction nosology and gives a sensible impetus for the future.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The neuro-fiction of addiction immunizations Animal studies demonstrating “proof of concept” for addiction immunizations were first published in the 1970s. As originally theorized, immunization c…

Wow! What a beautiful and ctitical exploration of "addition vaccines". SSM really is a great journal to follow.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A short-acting psychedelic intervention for major depressive disorder: a phase IIa randomized placebo-controlled trial - Nature Medicine A single intravenous dose of the psychedelic dimethyltryptamine, combined with psychological support, produces rapid and lasting reductions in depressive symptoms in adults with major depressive disor...

Not a huge fan of industry-sponsored trials especially when dealing with compounds readily available and imo not patent-worthy. Results seem quite promising though!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Neuromodulators Generate Multiple Context-Relevant Behaviors in Recurrent Neural Networks Abstract. Neuromodulators are critical controllers of neural states, with dysfunctions linked to various neuropsychiatric disorders. Although many biological aspects of neuromodulation have been studi...

Absolutely fascinating. Incredibly impressed by the opportunities recurrent neural networks offer without having any idea how they work.
direct.mit.edu/neco/article...

Cognitive arbitration between candidate dimensions of psychopathology - Molecular Psychiatry Molecular Psychiatry - Cognitive arbitration between candidate dimensions of psychopathology

I never really figured out the benefits of initiatives like HiTop and RDoC but still appreciate novel approaches to psycholathology like these.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Paper's I have read, February 23th-26th:

This recent RCT of an "AI stethoscope" claims the technology "shows promise" for diagnosing cardiovascular conditions.

It does not.

It is a textbook example of the risks of conducting unprincipled 'per protocol analyses'. Once again, peer review at a major medical journal has failed.

🧵 1/

A new preprint, co-authored with @johnwkrakauer.bsky.social:

The Deliberation Taboo

Cognitive science is, nominally, the science of thinking. We argue that the field has no theory of what thinking is and, even worse, that the topic has largely dropped out of focus. 1/

osf.io/preprints/ps...

A week ago, we had an open conversation amongst senior academics in leadership roles and their use of LLMs (in both their leadership capacities and individually). Small group, not representative, but it already taught me a great deal about the diversity of perspectives (& their consequences). 1/

New blog post - viruses are emerging as important drivers of unhealthy aging, implicated in everything from neurodegeneration to cardiovascular disease.
But longevity influencers are curiously quiet about this. Why? 1/N

synergies.substack.com/p/longevity-...

Facilitating unusual bodily experiences and out-of-body experiences across wakefulness and sleep: A high-density EEG and neurophenomenology study Unusual bodily experiences (UBEs) are illusory bodily perceptions that are not coherent with typical wakeful experiences, including flying or floating…

It's just so amazing to me that it is someones job to do research like this. Science really is the best job in the world! Good point to finish for this week as well. Already have enough papers on my list for next week 😊
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Trip sitting or just sitting? Acute psychedelic experiences vary little between session facilitators in healthy trials but substantially in clinical ones Psychedelics’ characteristic acute subjective effects predict therapeutic benefits, such as decreases in depression and anxiety. Thus, optimizing trea…

Would love to see this replicated across differernt study sites and psychedelic research centers!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fantastic essay on the big questions in neuroscience. A great addition to this fantastic talk on evolutionary neuroscience:
youtu.be/Czu7kkR_tNQ?...
aeon.co/essays/the-s...

If I ever get out of fixed-term contracts (or even tenure) I will try my best to bring an ibogaine trial to germany. While definitely risky, it does seem to provide a unique opportunity for the treatment for opioid use disorder.
www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/31...

Short rant because I've seen it pop up in the papers i've been reading: I really hate the term psychiatric (or worse neuropsychiatric) disorder! The disordered part is in the psychology or mental life of a person. Any other term is better really. E.g., psychological disorder.

Spatiotemporal mapping of brain organisation following the administration of 2C-B and psilocybin - Molecular Psychiatry Molecular Psychiatry - Spatiotemporal mapping of brain organisation following the administration of 2C-B and psilocybin

@maastrichtu.bsky.social really does some of the coolest psychopharmacology research world wide! Love the PET imaging and neurotransmitter stuff in the paper, but never could get behind the brain network hype. To far removed from neurochemistry for my tastes.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(PDF) Why is it hard to assess thought disorder? Taking stock of the third domain of psychosis PDF | Our review highlights a key paradox in psychosis research: Formal Thought Disorder (FTD), a robust predictor of poor functional outcomes and the... | Find, read and cite all the research you nee...

Quite ambitious project and as most ambitious projects oversteps its frame from time to time imo. However, a great overview regarding FTD and convincing argument thaf it is not a natural but a constituted entitiy.
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

The impact statement says it best: "This study indicates that people who experience greater autonomy, competence, and relatedness tend to drink less alcohol and have fewer alcohol problems."
psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

Perspectives of mothers and fathers affected by addiction of an adolescent/adult child – results from a mixed-method study - Archives of Public Health Background Addiction has an impact not only on the individual but also on family members. Stress and strain are high especially in parents of individuals with an addiction. Aim of the study is to focu...

Quite interesting to see these gender differences. Also important: "In our study, for both parents, fear of stigmatisation played an important role, both in their experience of stress and as a barrier to seeking help"
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Part 2 of this week. Papers I have read February 18th- 22nd:

Oh definitely positive. I think this is a great way of tackling the problem and the results are impressive.
My scepticism of the paper just because it contains llms actually suprised me. Seems that my personal worries about llms in therapy and education tend to spill over to other applications.

I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point.

I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion

People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it

That's it for now. Will probably have a new post by the end of the week. Lesson learned: it is quite a challenge to fit all thoughts into the length of a skeet.

This was on my list for a while and did not disappoint! A fantastic analysis of the sociology of psychedelic therapy trials. Imo this offers a framework to think about any medical intervention and related research. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Process‐outcome effects in psychotherapy research: an umbrella systematic review and meta‐analysis Click on the article title to read more.

This kind of research mostly leads to insecurity about the therapy I provide. Which processes am I consciously supporting? Which processes happen without my awareness? Am I enacting enough control over the therapeutic encounter?
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...