Lukas A. Basedow, PhD

Call for papers for a collection on placebo and nocebo effects in psychiatry - excellent! @sipsplacebo.bsky.social @timnicholson.bsky.social @devinterhune.bsky.social @labasedow.bsky.social @bnpa.bsky.social @sfb-trr-289.bsky.social

That's it for this week.
For next week I'll mainly try to read this handbook: zenodo.org/records/1569...
I'll see how far I get and might post a few more thoughts than usual.

Sustainability of Treatment Success 5 Years after Exposure-Based Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety Disorders Abstract. Introduction: Achieving sustainable success in the treatment of anxiety disorders remains a central objective in mental health care. Although research has demonstrated the short-term efficac...

Just read the abstract but I think its always great to highlight the importance of exposure for the therapy of anxiety.
karger.com/pps/article/...

Daily stress and gaming – an ambulatory assessment study in individuals with pathological, risky, and non-problematic gaming behavior Stress is considered a relevant factor in the development and maintenance of not only substance-related addictions but also behavioral addictions. Aga…

As a very drug-focused addiction researcher I think its always worthwhile to check out the work on behavioral addictions. Alwyas interesting parallels to find there!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Cannabis retail environment and treatment for cannabis use disorder This research investigates whether the efficacy of a digital cannabis use disorder (CUD) treatment for young adults (age 18–25) differs by exposure to…

Fantastic approach to investigating a common problem: abstinence motivation conflicting with a pro-use environment. Cements my opinion that the main problem with drug policy is profit oriented drug distribution (independent of its legal status).
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ongoing Challenges to Integrating Care in Settings That Serve Patients With Serious Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorder | Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice Background People with serious mental illness (SMI) and substance use disorders (SUD) experience difficulties accessing high‐quality medical care, despite their elevated risk for chronic health condit...

Always interesting to get a glimpse into qualitative research. Also adresses a problem that I think might be more common than would be expected when focusing on such a u.s.-centric issue.
psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...

Gonna break my self-imposed rule and add a second skeet: This took some time to work through, but was very much worth it. Such a pleasure to read a wonderfully written review by a true expert in their field. A real "That's how I want to write science" type of work!

Time, space, memory and brain–body rhythms - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Understanding how the brain represents experienced time and how representations of space and time are integrated to form episodic memories has been a goal of much neuroscientific research. In this Per...

"Like numbers, space and time may be built out of our actions in our niche and through societal agreements and hold no meaning in a world devoid of humans."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Psilocybin therapy for mood dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease: an open-label pilot trial - Neuropsychopharmacology Neuropsychopharmacology - Psilocybin therapy for mood dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease: an open-label pilot trial

Another preliminary finding (lots of those in psychedelic research). Imo psychedelics might really be beneficial for palliative care and dealing with chronic illness. (Last psychedelic study for this week, I promise).
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Like iboga, 5meoDMT seems like a different beast compared to the classical psychedelics. I definitely see potential here, but still very preliminary findings (and again industry sponsored).
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Psychedelic medicine: mechanisms, evidence, and translation to practice Over the past 15 years, psychedelic treatments have garnered substantial clinical interest, with psilocybin and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) advancing to phase 3 trials for various psychia...

A layperson-oriented and short overview regarding psychedelic science. Definitely a good intro text.
portlandpress.com/biochemist/a...
If this was of interest to you also check out this very recent and quite extensive review from @jhpsychedelics.bsky.social
www.bmj.com/content/392/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

A long but important read that imo covers most of the current issues with clinical trials involving psychedelics.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Pilot study of psilocybin in patients with post-treatment lyme disease - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Pilot study of psilocybin in patients with post-treatment lyme disease

Back on my psychedelic research grind. Quite promising results from this non-randomized trial. Im actually slightly optimistic regarding the potential of psychedelics for more neurolologically determined conditions.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Part 2 of this week. Papers I have read March 5th - March 8th:

Not just spontaneous remission: Time-dependent and independent effects in pre-intervention symptom reduction Psychological symptoms tend to change over time, even in the absence of clinical intervention. For example, self-ratings are often higher at screening…

🎉 I just published my second paper! Woo!
In psychotherapy trials we often see that symptoms reduce between screening and start of treatment. A plausible idea about that is that patients self-refer when their fluctuating symptoms are extra bad. We checked! (we tried to check) //

And that's a middle of the week break 🙂. As planned, fewer psychedelic papers. But still have lots on the reading list!

A neuromodulatory circuit-to-molecular pathway for reformatting aversive memories during recall Tan et al. identify a neuromodulatory circuit-to-molecular pathway in rats that updates aversive memories when they are recalled. Noradrenaline from the locus coeruleus triggers synapse-to-nuclear tra...

Again, absolutely impressed by the complexity and thouroughness necessary for neuroscientific questions and publications. www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Is Ketamine an Opioid?

A great comment by @theborislab.bsky.social (www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...) on an already great paper. Really should read both to grasp the importance of the paper. Fascinating work!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Adolescent Cannabis Use and Risk of Psychotic, Bipolar, Depressive, and Anxiety Disorders This cohort study assesses the association of past-year cannabis use by adolescents with the risk of incident psychiatric, bipolar, depressive, and anxiety disorders by age 26 years.

While a commendable errort, I don't think the authors have reported the influence of alcohol and other substance use, even though they assessed it. My suspicion is these reported associations would also be significant for other drug use.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Overdose Prevention Centers and Neighborhood Commercial Activity in New York City This cohort study assesses whether the opening of the first publicly recognized overdose prevention centers in the US was associated with changes in foot traffic and consumer spending at local busines...

Overdose Prevention Centers are indisputably good and necessary. There really is no sensible argument against providing these services. Apparently people are concerned such centers would reduce the value of the neighborhood. Well, they don't.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Reduction or Discontinuation vs Maintenance Antipsychotics This randomized clinical trial compares early dose reduction or discontinuation vs maintenance treatment of antipsychotic medication for patients remitted from first-episode psychosis in the Netherlan...

Imo very important to do this kind of work to figure out potential ways of reducing the need for psychopharmacological agents. As, nearly, always in pharmacological trials no words on psychotherapy...
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Integrating information in the brain’s EM field: the cemi field theory of consciousness A key aspect of consciousness is that it represents bound or integrated information, prompting an increasing conviction that the physical substrate of consciousness must be capable of encoding integrated information in the brain. However, as Ralph ...

I understand little of the brains electromagnetic properties and even less of the necessary physics. Still, this is the first theory of consciousness that I feel like I can grasp (not sure if thats a good thing).
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Vectorized instructive signals in cortical dendrites - Nature Mice learning a neurofeedback brain–computer interface task show neuron-specific teaching signals in cortical dendrites, consistent with a vectorized solution for credit assignment in the brain.

Neurons are complicated and different parts of the neuron are responsible for different kinds of signals (I guess, I really only understand parts of this work)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A short, German, perspective on the need of harm reduction approaches for people affected by psychotic disorders with comorbid crack use disorders.
www.thieme-connect.de/products/ejo...

Should biology put complexity first? The dictum “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” poses a problem for biology. How simply can it be told without doing dama…

Beautifully written essay by @philipcball.bsky.social "It seems possible that the very complexity of biology engenders an undue and unhelpful determination to sustain old, simple narratives beyond the point where they are useful [...]"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Cognitive primitives of the insect brain Understanding the mechanistic basis of human cognition is likely to benefit from investigating how it emerged through evolution. We propose that identifying and investigating fundamental brain functio...

A fascinating look into fly cognition. Always love the cross-species similarities emerging from an evolutionary perspective.
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Papers I have read, March 2nd - March 4th:

Fontana thinking his 6000+ experiments may not have been enough to feel confident in his conclusions in the 18th century while we expect our singular experiments and their standalone replications to do wonders some 250 years later... (excerpt from the intro of Jutta Schickore's About Experiment)

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