Lucie Berkovitch

💊 We conclude that ketamine may induce psychotic-like symptoms by disrupting consciousness.

📣 Please enjoy, share, and give feedback!

Many thanks to my colleagues who supported me in this epic tale!
Raphaël Gaillard, @standehaene.bsky.social, @thomasandrillon.bsky.social and Alexandre Salvador

👀 We used a visual masking paradigm and found that healthy volunteers under ketamine were less able to perceive a digit.

🧠 These effects were related to a decreased early brain activity in EEG (N1) and to the intensity of experienced psychotic-like symptoms.

Ketamine disrupts consciousness in healthy participants in relation with psychotic-like symptoms Ketamine is an NMDA-receptor antagonist, which alters the state of wakeful consciousness at high doses. At lower doses, it induces reversible psychotic-like symptoms and has been used as a pharmacolog...

" #Ketamine disrupts #consciousness in healthy participants in relation with #psychotic-like symptoms"

🥸 This is the title of our last preprint @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social giving some insights on how ketamine at subanesthetic doses mimicks psychosis symptoms!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thank you so much @haunted.audio, it is an amazing series!

This amazing series by Tim Hayward and Richard Ward @haunted.audio (🙏🙏🙏) also featured renowned neuroscientists such as @christimmermann.bsky.social, @katrinpreller.bsky.social, Gul Dölen, as well as nurses, historians, philosophers, sociologists, etc.

Enjoy! 🎧

BBC Radio 4 - Understand, The Trip, 10. Unknown unknowns What more is there to learn about psychedelics? Tim Hayward makes a case for curiosity.

In the first episode, I explain what is specific about psychedelics as treatment in psychiatry.
In last episode, dealing about the future of psychedelics, I talk about the possible dissociation between the psychedelic experience and the therapeutic effects:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

🎙️ I am very proud to have participated (with a very strong French accent) to the BBC Radio 4 program Understand entitled "The Trip", about the science, culture, history and future of psychedelics 🌈

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

A few moments from our ongoing MESEC 2025 Workshop (‘Centering Experience in Mental Health: Uniting Psychiatry and Consciousness Science’) at the beautiful Lago di Bolsena!

@lucieberko.bsky.social
@tehseennoorani.bsky.social

Disruption of consciousness depends on insight in obsessive-compulsive disorder and on positive symptoms in schizophrenia Abstract. Disruption of conscious access contributes to the advent of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia and could also explain lack of insight in other p

🚨 New article in #NCONSC

Disruption of consciousness depends on insight in obsessive-compulsive disorder and on positive symptoms in schizophrenia
academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

@lucieberko.bsky.social

#consciousness
🧠🧪

🙏 A huge thanks to my co-authors Selim Tümkaya, Bengü Yücens, Mohamed Gunduz and Maxime Maheu @maheump.bsky.social

In sum :
✅ Consciousness disruption translates into various symptomatic expressions according to the psychiatric disorder
✅ In patients with OCD, consciousness disruption delineates two distinct subgroups in terms of cognitive deficits and clinical features

‼️ Patients with SCZ have consciousness disruption in relation with positive symptoms
‼️ Patients with OCD who have a poor insight exhibit similar consciousness deficits as patients with schizophrenia
‼️ Patients with OCD and good insight performed similarly to controls ⤵️

We compared consciousness measures in patients with #OCD and with #schizophrenia as a function of symptom relevant dimensions.

😮 We found pretty surprising results: ⤵️

Disruption of consciousness depends on insight in obsessive-compulsive disorder and on positive symptoms in schizophrenia Abstract. Disruption of conscious access contributes to the advent of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia and could also explain lack of insight in other p

🗞️ First article as #lastauthor published in Neuroscience of Consciousness @nconsc.bsky.social 🥳 🥳 🥳

academic.oup.com/nc/article/d...

🔍 In this study, we examine how #consciousness disruption translates into clinical manifestations in different #psychiatric disorders. 🧶⤵️

Les substances hallucinogènes peuvent-elles soigner l’alcoolisme et la dépression ? La dépendance à l’alcool serait, selon le ministère de la Santé, responsable chaque année de 49 000 décès. Mais selon une étude menée par le CHU de de Nîmes, les champignons hallucinogènes pourraient ...

Berko on air de bon matin sur @franceculture.fr

www.radiofrance.fr/francecultur...

Thanks to all my collaborators!!

Overall, our results underscore that a univariate data-driven symptom improvement measure can be more sensitive to detect antidepressant action and is specifically associated with baseline neurobehavioral features.

Moreover, improvement was more robustly predicted by baseline neural and clinical features under antidepressant compared to placebo.

However, the intensity of antidepressant and placebo response significantly differs (in previous papers on this dataset, scale level measures of improvement could not distinguish between the two).

We applied principal component analysis (PCA) on the variations of items from multiple clinical scales and strikingly observed a similar pattern of clinical improvement across antidepressant and placebo arms.

We explored clinical response in patients with major depressive disorder from the EMBARC dataset.

New paper out in Psychological Medicine where we found that #sertraline and #placebo strikingly induce a similar clinical improvement predicted by distinct neural configurations!

doi.org/10.1017/S003...

A big thank to my colleagues Baptiste Fauvel, @katrinpreller.bsky.social and Raphaël Gaillard

Please find here the link for free access until 27th of July:
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lE1NY3M3l...

Enjoy!!

🧠 No fewer than 81 articles are described in depth and put together to provide an overview of the neurocognitive effects of psilocybin in healthy volunteers and people with medical conditions.

😅 Believe me, it was quite a long journey before it was published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews!

Neurocognitive effects of psilocybin: A systematic and comprehensive review of neuroimaging studies in humans Psilocybin is a psychedelic serotonergic compound that is renowned for its potent psychoactive effects. Over the past 15 years, an increasing number o…

📚 Just another #review about #psychedelics? Maybe... but in this paper we systematically reviewed ALL neuroimaging articles involving #psilocybin intake in humans.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Please feel free to join the AFPBN Psychedelic Medicine Section via our website: www.afpbn.org/sections/med...

💯 The event was SOLD OUT, highlighting that psychedelic medicine is a hot topic in France.

My colleagues of the section (Luc Mallet, Bruno Romeo, Hugo Bottemanne) and I worked hard, and we are very proud that this event was such a hit 🌈

🙏 Thanks also to the MILDECA for their support, Com' To Evidence for the organization, and all the section members who chaired the talks: Baptiste Fauvel, Anne Claret, Alexandre Alt, Laetitia Vanderijst, Jerome Jeanblanc, @marcgielen.bsky.social, Carine Becamel, Michael Koslowski, Alain Gardier.

A big thanks to @katrinpreller.bsky.social,
Guy Goodwin, David Erritzoe, Friederike Holze @drfriid.bsky.social, Amandine Luquiens
@luquiensa.bsky.social , Lea Mertens, Christian Lüscher, Mickael Naassila and Matthias Liechti for participating and for the astonishing quality of their talks.

Yesterday, it was the first edition of the National Symposium of the #Psychedelic Medicine Section of the AFPBN and it was a huge success!!

🌟 Stars of the field shared with us the latest news, "avant première" results from French and international research, opening inspiring perspectives.