Trial reportNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2020
Me, myself, bye: regional alterations in glutamate and the experience of ego dissolution with psilocybin.
Trial report in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 118 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
118 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 252 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of the pharmacokinetics of classical serotonergic psychedelic compounds in healthy adult subjects.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2026Pooled it
- Catalyst for change: Psilocybin's antidepressant mechanisms-A systematic review.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Clinical Pharmacokinetics of Psilocin After Psilocybin Administration: A Systematic Review and Post-Hoc Analysis.Clinical pharmacokinetics · 2025Pooled it
- Cognitive functioning associated with acute and subacute effects of classic psychedelics and MDMA - a systematic review and meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2024Pooled it
- Default Mode Network Modulation by Psychedelics: A Systematic Review.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Pooled it
- A Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)-Guided Dashboard to Review Psilocybin Target Domains: A Systematic Review.CNS drugs · 2022Pooled it
- Psychedelics and Neuroplasticity: A Systematic Review Unraveling the Biological Underpinnings of Psychedelics.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Spatiotemporal mapping of brain organisation following the administration of 2C-B and psilocybin.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Trial
- Negative affective bias in depression following treatment with psilocybin or escitalopram - a secondary analysis from a randomized trial.Translational psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Psilocybin therapy for mood dysfunction in Parkinson's disease: an open-label pilot trial.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Naturalistic psychedelic therapy: The role of relaxation and subjective drug effects in antidepressant response.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2024Trial
- Inter-individual variability in neural response to low doses of LSD.Translational psychiatry · 2024Trial
- The effect of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on whole-brain functional and effective connectivity.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Trial
- Spontaneous and deliberate creative cognition during and after psilocybin exposure.Translational psychiatry · 2021Trial
- The entropic brain today.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2026Review
- Psychedelics and women's mental health: the effects of female sex hormones on psychedelics' efficacy and tolerability.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
- Convergent neuroimmune signaling underlying rapid antidepressant response to ketamine and psychedelics.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Psilocybin restores behavior and 5-HTCell reports. Medicine · 2026Article
- An international mega-analysis of psychedelic drug effects on brain circuit function.Nature medicine · 2026Article
58 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There is growing interest in the therapeutic utility of psychedelic substances, like psilocybin, for disorders characterized by distortions of the self-experience, like depression. Accumulating preclinical evidence emphasizes the role of the glutamate system in the acute action of the drug on brain and behavior; however this has never been tested in humans. Following a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel group design, we utilized an ultra-high field multimodal brain imaging approach and demonstrated that psilocybin (0.17 mg/kg) induced region-dependent alterations in glutamate, which predicted distortions in the subjective experience of one's self (ego dissolution). Whereas higher levels of medial prefrontal cortical glutamate were associated with negatively experienced ego dissolution, lower levels in hippocampal glutamate were associated with positively experienced ego dissolution. Such findings provide further insights into the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of the psychedelic, as well as the baseline, state. Importantly, they may also provide a neurochemical basis for therapeutic effects as witnessed in ongoing clinical trials.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.