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Liechti ME. 
“Modern Clinical Research on LSD”. 
Neuropsychopharmacology. 2017 Apr 27.
Abstract
All modern clinical studies using the classic hallucinogen lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in healthy subjects or patients in the last 25 years are reviewed herein. There were five recent studies in healthy participants and one in patients. In a controlled setting, LSD acutely induced bliss, audiovisual synesthesia, altered meaning of perceptions, derealization, depersonalization, and mystical experiences. These subjective effects of LSD were mediated by the 5-HT2A receptor. LSD increased feelings of closeness to others, openness, trust, and suggestibility. LSD impaired the recognition of sad and fearful faces, reduced left amygdala reactivity to fearful faces, and enhanced emotional empathy. LSD increased the emotional response to music and the meaning of music. LSD acutely produced deficits in sensorimotor gating, similar to observations in schizophrenia. LSD had weak autonomic stimulant effects and elevated plasma cortisol, prolactin, and oxytocin levels.

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance studies showed that LSD acutely reduced the integrity of functional brain networks and increased connectivity between networks that normally are more dissociated. LSD increased functional thalamocortical connectivity and functional connectivity of the primary visual cortex with other brain areas. The latter effect was correlated with subjective hallucinations. LSD acutely induced global increases in brain entropy that were associated with greater trait openness 14 days later.

In patients with anxiety associated with life-threatening disease, anxiety was reduced for 2 months after two doses of LSD. In medical settings, no complications of LSD administration were observed. These data should contribute to further investigations of the therapeutic potential of LSD in psychiatry.
Notes # : Cites Erowid paper. Review article.
Comments and Responses to this Article
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Status: display
earth
Sep 4, 2017 16:59
NiceReview #

Great review of LSD research through mid 2016.

Table 1 gives a nice summary look at receptor and transporter binding & potency for LSD, Psilocin, DMT, and Mescaline.

"Although the subjective effects of LSD in humans can be blocked by pretreatment with a 5-HT2A receptor antagonist (Preller et al, 2017; Kraehenmann et al, 2017) and are therefore clearly mediated by 5-HT2A receptor activation, the signaling pathways and downstream effects that mediate the effects of LSD have not been conclusively identified (Nichols, 2016)."
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