Two psilocybin doses before chemo prevented nerve damage in animal models — without hurting tumor treatment

Key Findings

💊 Ketamine works for treatment-resistant bipolar depression — in a randomized trial

• A randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Psychiatry tested serial intravenous ketamine infusions in patients with bipolar depression who hadn't responded to standard treatments.
• Antidepressant efficacy was demonstrated, filling a notable gap: most prior ketamine data came from major depressive disorder, not bipolar specifically. Safety data in this population were also characterized.

👫 MDMA-assisted couples therapy cut PTSD symptoms and improved relationships

• A small open-label pilot — 8 veterans with PTSD and their partners — tested MDMA combined with brief cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy across two drug sessions plus integration sessions.
• Veterans showed large pre-to-post reductions in PTSD symptom severity. Both veterans and partners reported large improvements in relationship functioning. No serious adverse events occurred. Some relationship gains partially rebounded during follow-up.

🧠 LSD, psilocybin, and 2C-B leave distinct fingerprints on brain metabolism

• Using brain imaging in rats, researchers mapped how psilocybin, LSD, and 2C-B each altered metabolic activity across neural networks — both acutely and one week later.
• The drugs produced distinct acute patterns. One week out, LSD and psilocybin — but not 2C-B — showed modest, sustained reductions in activity across cortical and limbic regions. The differences suggest these compounds aren't interchangeable, even though all three act on the same serotonin receptor.

🍄 Microdosing psilocybin: popular, but the evidence is still thin

• A systematic review synthesized the existing literature on microdosing psilocybin mushrooms and truffles in adults, examining reported benefits, motivations, dosing protocols, and adverse events.
• Reported benefits are wide-ranging — mood, focus, creativity — but the evidence base remains poorly characterized. Competing interests and methodological variability across studies make it hard to draw firm conclusions.

🏥 Oregon's legal psilocybin services meet real-world complexity

• A preprint describes PEACE, a medical consultation model built inside a traditional healthcare system to support patients considering Oregon's regulated psilocybin services.
• Two illustrative cases show the gap between clinical trial populations and real-world users: one patient had a distressing high-dose unsupervised experience during abstinence; the other's depression worsened months after supervised sessions. Early improvement didn't predict longer-term trajectories.

🌿 Cannabis co-use was linked to greater perceived benefits from psilocybin

• A retrospective study of 365 current psilocybin users found that younger adults reported more adverse experiences, while older adults had milder effects — though age didn't significantly affect mystical experiences or psychological insight across groups.
• Cannabis co-use specifically was associated with greater self-reported improvements in quality of life, anxiety, depression, and alcohol use. The study is observational and retrospective, so causation cannot be inferred.