A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, pilot study of cannabis-related driving impairment assessed by driving simulator and self-report.

In the context of increasing cannabis use, understanding how cannabis affects specific driving behaviors is crucial in mitigating risks and ensuring road safety.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 April

Lifetime classic psychedelic use and headaches: A cross-sectional study.

Migraine and cluster headache are two primary headache disorders for which conventional treatments are limited. Classic psychedelic substances such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin are potentially promising new treatment candidates for these conditions.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 April

A three-stage strategy for conducting an experimental investigation: A recommendation to improve the reproducibility of reported conclusions.

The reproducibility of the results from preclinical research rests on many factors, including the selection of appropriate experimental designs for the individual experiments that constitute the investigation. The design of each of these experiments depends on their purpose within the entire investigation and the information to be gained from conducting them. Here, we explain and justify a three-stage strategy comprising a series of different types of experiment, each with a different purpose and design: a pilot study, a hypothesis-generating experiment and a final hypothesis-confirming experiment. Compliance with this three-stage strategy, over the course of an entire investigation, will not only strengthen its reproducibility but, importantly, can save time and other resources, including the total number of animals used.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 April

Single-dose psilocybin therapy for alcohol use disorder: Pharmacokinetics, feasibility, safety and efficacy in an open-label study.

Psilocybin, a serotonin 2A receptor agonist with psychedelic properties, shows promise as a novel treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). While current studies involve two dosing sessions, the effects of a single dose have not been investigated.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 March

Acute subanesthetic ketamine-induced effects on the mismatch negativity and their relationship to early and sustained treatment response in major depressive disorder.

A sub-anesthetic dose of ketamine, an N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist, produces robust antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (MDD). The mismatch negativity (MMN) is reliant on glutamatergic neurotransmission and reduced by NMDAR antagonists. The MMN may characterise the neural mechanisms underlying ketamine's effects.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 March

Quantitative natural language processing markers of psychoactive drug effects: A pre-registered systematic review.

Psychoactive substances used for recreational purposes have mind-altering effects, but systematic evaluation of these effects is largely limited to self-reports. Automated analysis of expressed language (speech and written text) using natural language processing (NLP) tools can provide objective readouts of mental states. In this pre-registered systematic review, we investigate findings from applying the emerging field of computational linguistics to substance use with specific focus on identifying short-term effects of psychoactive drugs. From the literature identified to date, we note that all the studied drugs - stimulants, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), cannabis, ketamine and psychedelics - affect language production. Based on two or more studies per substance, we note some emerging patterns: stimulants increase verbosity; lysergic acid diethylamide reduces the lexicon; MDMA increases semantic proximity to emotional words; psilocybin increases positive sentiment and cannabis affects speech stream acoustics. Ketamine and other drugs are understudied regarding NLP features (one or no studies). One study provided externally validated support for NLP and machine learning-based identification of MDMA intoxication. We could not undertake a meta-analysis due to the high degree of heterogeneity among outcome measures and the lack of sufficient number of studies. We identify a need for harmonised speech tasks to improve replicability and comparability, standardisation of methods for curating and analysing speech and text data, theory-driven inquiries and the need for developing a shared 'substance use language corpus' for data mining. The growing field of computational linguistics can be utilized to advance human behavioral pharmacology of psychoactive substances. Achieving this will require concerted efforts towards consistency in research methods.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 March

Recasting the role of electroconvulsive therapy and the electroconvulsive therapy practitioner: For severe illness, not necessarily treatment-resistant depression.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 March

Sweet-liking and sugar supplementation as innovative components in substance use disorder treatment: A systematic review.

Substance use disorders are a major global public health concern. While a wide range of psychotherapies and pharmacotherapies are available for their treatment, efficacy is limited and many patients fail to benefit from these treatments. Like addictive substances, sugar seems to trigger the dopaminergic reward centre, and sweet-liking might be a modifier of substance use disorder treatment.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 March

The mechanism of action of clozapine.

Previous hypotheses for the superiority of clozapine over other antipsychotics have failed to stand the test of time. Here we describe how the unique pharmacology of clozapine in the peripheral nervous system held clues for solving the puzzle of clozapine in the central nervous system. Clozapine appears to have been the prototype for a new class of antipsychotics, now entering clinical psychiatry, which activates muscarinic acetylcholine receptors.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 March

A single injection of neuropeptide QRFP in the lateral hypothalamus decreased food intake.

Severe eating disorders, such as obesity, bulimia, and anorexia, keep increasing to epidemic proportions worldwide. Understanding of neuropeptides' role in complex hunger/satiety mechanisms may allow new prospects for treatment and prevention. Pyroglutamylated arginine-phenylalanine-amide peptides (QRFPs) are thought to enhance feeding following the central administration.

Journal of Psychopharmacology | 2025 March