How do psychedelics work?
Curr Opin Psychiatry January 1, 2019 Robin L. Carhart-Harris 138 citations
Psychedelics are reawakening interest in psychiatry and neuroscience due to promising small-scale clinical trials and brain imaging findings. This opinion piece proposes that psychedelics work through a cascade of neurobiological changes spanning multiple scales: from molecular serotonin 2A receptor agonism, to heightened anatomical and functional plasticity, increased brain entropy, and network-level disintegration and desegregation. These changes ultimately relax high-level beliefs, and psychedelic therapy aims to harness that belief-relaxation to revise pathological beliefs toward healthier ones.