NPP BrainPod

Draulio Araujo, professor at the Brain Institute in the University of Rio Grande Norte in Natal, Brazil, has been studying ayahuasca for more than 20 years. It’s a psychedelic plant used in rituals in South America that has also been researched for its potential to treat depression. The effects of ayahuasca can last for hours and also lead to side effects including vomiting and diarrhea. The active psychedelic drug in ayahuasca is ...

New drugs that target the endocannabinoid system are being proposed for disorders that are usually characterized by the dysregulation of social processing, like social anxiety disorder and autism spectrum disorder. Researchers have been trying to understand the mechanisms for how these drugs work. 

Leah Mayo is assistant professor at the University of Calgary, and she’s one of the authors of a new study in the journal Neuro...

The scientific literature has shown that females demonstrate more aversion to risk-taking than males. Studies have also demonstrated that the basal lateral amygdala, or BLA, is a critical hub for processing risk and reward information. And yet further research has shown that activity in the amygdala differs between males and females, and that the expression of particular dopamine receptors called D2 receptors are greater in females...

The menstrual cycle is known to affect things like mood and changes in pain. But there can also be symptoms that have a serious impact on a person’s function, ability to work, ability to maintain friendships and romantic relationships. This is a rare condition known as premenstrual dysphoric disorder. But it’s not the only psychiatric condition that can worsen with changes in the menstrual cycle. For instance, nearly 60 percent of ...

Researchers are interested in understanding the biology of why some people are more likely to overconsume substances. Some substances are difficult to study—people might not admit to illegal substance abuse or to how much alcohol they drink. But Americans are more likely to accurately recall and share how much coffee they drink—which is related to how much caffeine they consume. And so a team of researchers paired up with the compa...

Scientists have been amassing an increasing amount of evidence about the impact of racial discrimination and racial trauma, including how it can have an impact on brain regions involved with threat vigilance and emotional regulation. At the same time, there’s evidence that increased engagement in those areas has been linked to increased risk of mental health problems like depression, and they also suspect it could be a vulnerabilit...

There’s a hormone called ghrelin that’s secreted in the stomach, and when someone is hungry it contributes to that feeling of hunger and the need to search for food. But neurological studies have suggested that ghrelin might also play a role in compulsivity and impulsivity, and it might be related to substance use disorders.

Rebecca Boeme is an assistant professor at Linkoping University in Sweden. She and her colleagues decided...

Dr. Nicole Petersen is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UCLA. Her commentary is a new paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, called “Spotlighting SHAPERS: sex hormones associated with psychological and endocrine roles.” Dr. Petersen starts the paper describing an unnamed signaling molecule that can affect the physical structure of the brain and that seems to be related to a wi...

Serotonin is a critical chemical when it comes to a number of psychiatric conditions, such as OCD, where it seems to play a particular role in cognitive flexibility. That is, serotonin levels are related to the fact that someone is perseverating on intrusive thoughts or compulsions and isn’t able to be as flexible as otherwise would be necessary.

Trevor Robbins, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge,...

The drug naloxone, otherwise known as Narcan, is a critical tool in reversing fentanyl overdoses and reducing mortality. But now fentanyl is appearing on the streets adulterated with a drug called xylazine. 

Justin Strickland, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Cassandra Gipson-Reichardt, associate professor in the department of pharmacology nutritional sciences at the University of Kent...

Sanjay Mathew is a professor and vice chair for research at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program. He’s one of the two authors of a recent review paper in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, “The why, when, where, how, and so what of so-called rapidly acting antidepressants.”

With his colleague Alan Schatzberg, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Mood ...

In-person treatment for substance use disorders is an incredibly important tool, but there’s a high failure rate — more than 50 percent of people who enter drop out within the first month. There hasn’t been a highly accurate method of identifying who might leave and who might succeed, and knowing this could help centers allocate resources to give the right type of assistance to the right people at the right time. One tool available...

Antisocial personality disorder, or ASPD, is a difficult disorder to study. There have been studies on psychopathic individuals, and on youth with psychopathic traits, but most studies on ASPD to date have been on incarcerated adults. A team of researchers at Heidelberg University wanted to study individuals who are not incarcerated and see what these findings could elucidate about the brains, in particular the amygdalas, of indivi...

It’s clear there are diversity issues in science, both in terms of who does or doesn’t receive research grants, as well as who is or isn’t represented at the highest levels of scientific research. When Caleb Weinreb and Daphne Sun began their PhD program at Harvard University Medical School in systems biology, they took this on as an issue. They learned from others in their department, and they eventually created a course on the to...

Psychedelic drugs have received attention recently for their potential use as treatments for psychiatric disorders. Single, high doses of LSD have shown promise for treating depressive disorders. But there’s another way in which people have been using LSD, and it’s what’s known as micro-dosing, taking LSD at below noticeable levels, where it doesn’t seem to have a psychedelic impact—but users say it does in fact have an impact on t...

After a traumatic event, women are more likely to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Research has been conducted on what might be causing this higher rate of diagnoses; for instance, perhaps women had more cumulative trauma in their lives than the men in question. But scientists say that even taking prior childhood trauma into account, women are still diagnosed at a higher rate than men. 

Alyssa Roec...

Maladaptive aggression, while not a diagnosable neuropsychiatric disorder on its own, often presents as an important comorbid condition with other neuropsychiatric disorders. But while both men and women can and do display aggression, there’s been a bias to thinking of aggression, in both its adaptive and maladaptive forms, as a male behavior. 

Sam Golden is an assistant professor at the University of Washington in the depa...

Sometimes, when researchers are conducting an experiment, the results are confusing. Maybe the control group of animals doesn’t behave the way a control should in theory be behaving. Maybe a researcher repeats a study and sees results that are unusually different from the first time around. The answers to these issues might lie in something called ‘hidden variables,’ according to a new study titled, “What’s wrong with my research? ...

Kirstie Cummings and Sofia Beas are both new assistant professors in the department of neurobiology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. When they met, they discussed the job application process, their support network, and their own personal processes, and they decided to write an article that could serve as a resource for candidates from different backgrounds, many of whom might not have the same resources that Dr. Cummings a...