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Psilocybin Clinical Trials

Psilocybin as a tool for enhancing cognitive flexibility

To see complete record on www.trialregister.nl, please visit this link

Id: NTR6505

Organisation Name: Maastricht University

Overal Status: Planned

Start Date: 2017-05-01

Lead Sponsor: Maastricht University

Brief Summary: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder in which an individual’s ability to function is impaired by emotional responses to memories of a traumatic event. It is typically a chronic illness associated with high rates of psychiatric and medical comorbidity, disability, suffering, drug abuse, and suicide. However despite the high incidence of PTSD, current therapies provide limited effectiveness, with many people being unresponsive to treatment. Suggestions for effective treatments for PTSD include a hypothetical drug that would be capable of enhancing divergent thinking, a cognitive process used to generate as many innovative ideas as possible. A recent study from our lab showed that psychedelics significantly increased divergent thinking after drug intake. Furthermore, imaging studies have shown that the classic psychedelic, psilocybin, promotes a de-synchronization in the default mode network that is suggested to result in cognitive flexibility and enhanced creative thinking. Taken together these studies suggest that psilocybin can enhance divergent thinking, which may provide therapeutic potential in facilitating goal directed over habitual behaviour. Principal demonstrations showing that psilocybin facilitates cognitive flexibility would be very relevant for future support of clinical applications of psilocybin assisted therapy in PTSD patients, and may provide therapeutic potential for patients whom current options are not effective.

Country: Netherlands