Links for Keyword: Drug Abuse

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Links 1 - 20 of 2010

Historic decline in U.S. overdose deaths threatened by changing street drug supply

Brian Mann Earlier this year, Naida Rutherford, the coroner in Richland County, South Carolina, was helping investigate what appeared to be a mysterious overdose. The case had many of the hallmarks of a typical fentanyl death. "Every sort of physical manifestation, like the foam coming from the mouth and nose, as if they had an overdose," Rutherford said. "Their blood tested negative for any substance, which was very odd." Her team was stumped, so Rutherford expanded the testing, looking for new compounds. "That's where we found the cychlorphine," she told NPR, referring to one of the incredibly potent synthetic opioids spreading fast in the U.S. street drug supply. Sponsor Message The state of Virginia has seen drug overdose deaths plunge by more than 40% in a single year. Many other states are seeing improvements above 30%. Why is this happening? Researchers say it may be a combination of factors, some hopeful and some painful. "This is the first time we've seen it in South Carolina, which is very scary because none of us knew to test for it." Experts say the U.S. addiction crisis is evolving fast, in ways that appear both hopeful and incredibly dangerous. The peril comes from a street drug supply that chemists now describe as a "synthetic soup." Where once most drug users mostly consumed plant-based substances such as cocaine and heroin, drug gangs and cartels have shifted to producing and selling synthetic substances made from industrial chemicals. © 2026 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 30199 - Posted: 04.15.2026

The Fast-Changing Chemistry of New, Dangerous Drugs

By Jonathan Corum and Matt Richtel Illicit labs are creating new synthetic drugs at breakneck speed. Dangerous, untested compounds are reaching users long before health agencies know they exist. Older drugs are regularly modified to create novel threats. Ecstasy is a prime example. The party drug MDMA has been illegal since 1985. Its molecular structure can be drawn like this: But what if you could add one atom to this molecule to change both the experience of taking the drug and its legal status? You can. A single oxygen atom changes the molecule to methylone, which provides an Ecstasy-like euphoria. The discovery of what this simple change could do has had a profound consequence. When methylone reached the U.S. market in 2010 the drug could be sold legally in corner stores and smoke shops as “bath salts.” But methylone wasn’t the end of the story. Illicit chemists now use methylone’s structure as a template for modern-day alchemy. New drug laws push them to invent new variants, which emerge in the illicit drug market with untested potencies and effects — a vicious cycle that has been impossible to contain. These chemists are located in unregulated labs around the globe, from big enterprises in China and India that produce drugs and their precursor compounds in huge volumes, to single-person and small domestic operations that cut and package drugs for retail sale. Some of the most-used drugs, such as fentanyl, are mixed in Mexico and exported north. © 2026 The New York Times Company

How Psychedelics Affect the Brain

By Andrew Jacobs As researchers have sought to demonstrate the therapeutic benefits of mind-altering drugs like LSD and psilocybin “magic mushrooms,” many have struggled to explain exactly how these compounds work on the human brain. One way scientists have tried to show what these compounds do is by using functional M.R.I. machines to peer into the brains of research participants in the midst of a psychedelic experience. This has produced evocative color images that show a maelstrom of activity as the drugs disrupt patterns of connectivity between brain regions and networks. But the interpretations of those scans, published in scientific journals, have been inconsistent and even contradictory. Over the past five years, an international consortium of researchers has tried to make sense of the divergent results by bringing together the data from nearly a dozen brain imaging studies in five countries that have been published since 2012. The studies included more than 500 scans of 267 research participants on five substances: LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT and ayahuasca. Their findings, published on Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, suggest that psychedelics prompt a welter of activity between regions of the brain that normally operate somewhat independently: the areas that process sensory information like vision, hearing and touch, and those involved with abstract thinking and self-reflection. The research suggests that psychedelic compounds temporarily reduce the separation between how we think and how we perceive, which could explain the neurological mechanics behind the sensory distortions, mystical experiences and ego dissolution that patients report during sessions. © 2026 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 30193 - Posted: 04.08.2026

A low dose of psilocybin helps smokers quit in new study

Will Stone The long-running campaign against smoking could find reinforcements from the new wave of research into psychedelics. Though much of the attention around psychedelics has focused on depression and other mental health conditions, researchers believe these substances also hold the potential to transform addiction treatment. A new study makes the strongest case yet for a psychedelic drug's impact on smoking, which remains the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. The trial, conducted by a team at Johns Hopkins University, compared nicotine patches to the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, known as psilocybin. At the end of six months, those who had taken just one dose of psilocybin had more than six times greater odds of being abstinent from cigarettes than their counterparts who relied on the nicotine substitute. Everyone in the study also underwent cognitive behavioral therapy for smoking cessation over the course of 13 weeks. "I was surprised by the sheer magnitude of the effect," says Matthew Johnson, the study's author and a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins. The findings, published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open on Tuesday, came from a sample of 82 current smokers, who were randomly separated into two groups. Similar to other psychedelic trials, the participants had support from facilitators to make sure they were comfortable and prepared for their trip. They ingested a relatively high dose of pure psilocybin. © 2026 npr

Weight loss drugs may stop people getting addicted to drugs and alcohol

Denis Campbell Weight loss drugs could help people avoid getting addicted to alcohol, tobacco and drugs such as cannabis and cocaine, a study has found. They could also reduce the risk of people already addicted to illicit substances having an overdose, ending up in hospital or dying, according to research published in the British Medical Journal. Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity, such as Mounjaro and Ozempic, are thought to work by influencing the brain’s reward pathways in order to cut cravings. They help people feel fuller by mimicking the natural substance released after eating. The US study analysed 606,434 US veterans with type 2 diabetes, who were monitored for up to three years. It found that GLP-1s reduced the risk of alcohol-related disorders in those with no history of substance use by 18% and of using cannabis (14%), cocaine (20%), nicotine (20%) and opioids (25%), compared with those on other sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 drugs also used to treat diabetes. Weight loss drugs also reduce the risk of people already using substances from overdosing (39%), needing emergency help in A&E (31%) or dying (50%). “This study adds to emerging research exploring whether GLP-1 medicines may influence brain pathways involved in reward and addiction”, said Prof Claire Anderson, the president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which represents 35,500 UK pharmacists. She added: “As this was an observational study, it is important to be clear that it does not show these medicines prevent or treat addiction. Further research, including clinical trials, will be needed to understand whether GLP-1 medicines have a direct effect.” © 2026 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 30150 - Posted: 03.07.2026

Doing Science and Philosophy On Drugs

By Nick Hilden Since the start of the so-called psychedelic renaissance some 25 years ago, writers have tackled the subject from the vantages of science, politics, mental health, productivity, creativity, spirituality, how-to, and even cooking. With his new book On Drugs, Justin Smith-Ruiu explores these powerful drugs through a philosophical lens, analyzing their effects and implications via thinkers spanning Foucault to Freud, Spinoza to Sartre, and scores of others who over the past 2,000 years have sought to explain the mysteries of the human experience. While authors have applied philosophy to psychedelics before, they have typically done so through the framework of mental health or otherwise medicinal frameworks, while Smith-Ruiu is more interested in treating psychedelics as philosophical objects worthy of examination in and of themselves. At the same time, he follows the drugs down the rabbit hole, sizing up what psychedelics taught him on a personal level, and delving into questions surrounding the scientific prohibition of auto-experimentation, whether the hallucinations conjured by psychedelics are real or imagined, and what they have to teach us about the nature of reality. A professor of history and science, Smith-Ruiu has previously applied philosophical analysis to some of the most pressing issues of our day. In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, he explored how the internet arose from some of our deepest philosophical yearnings. In Irrationality, he asserted that human irritation is fundamental to the human experience rather than a contextual social aberration. And in Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference, he argued that our contemporary conceptions of race are not innate but rather emerged from the modern scientific efforts to classify and systematize. (He also happens to have an asteroid named after him—it doesn’t get much “higher” than that.) © 2026 NautilusNext Inc.,

A couple of teas or coffees a day could lower risk of dementia

Ian Sample Science editor People who have a couple of teas or coffees a day have a lower risk of dementia and marginally better cognitive performance than those who avoid the drinks, researchers say. Health records for more than 130,000 people showed that over 40 years, those who routinely drank two to three cups of caffeinated coffee or one to two cups of caffeinated tea daily had a 15-20% lower risk of dementia than those who went without. The caffeinated coffee drinkers also reported slightly less cognitive decline than those who opted for decaf and performed better on some objective tests of brain function, according to a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The findings suggest habitual tea and coffee drinking is good for the brain, but the research cannot prove it, as caffeine drinkers may be less prone to dementia for other reasons. A similar link would arise if poor sleepers, who appear to have a greater risk of cognitive decline, steered clear of caffeine to get a better night’s rest. “Our study alone can’t prove causality, but to our knowledge, it is the best evidence to date looking at coffee and tea intake and cognitive health, and it is consistent with plausible biology,” said the lead author, Yu Zhang, who studies nutritional epidemiology at Harvard University. Coffee and tea contain caffeine and polyphenols that may protect against brain ageing by improving vascular health and reducing inflammation and oxidative stress, where harmful atoms and molecules called free radicals damage cells and tissues. Substances in the drinks could also work by improving metabolic health. Caffeine, for example, is linked to lower rates of type 2 diabetes, a known risk factor for dementia. © 2026 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 30113 - Posted: 02.11.2026

Powerful New Drug Is Creating a ‘Withdrawal Crisis’ in Philadelphia

By Jan Hoffman Around 2 a.m., Joseph felt the withdrawal coming on, sudden and hard. He fell to the floor convulsing, vomiting ferociously. The delirium and hallucinations were starting. He shook awake his friend, who had let him in earlier to shower, wash his clothes and grab some sleep. “Do you have a few dollars?” he pleaded. “I have to get right.” The friend, a community outreach worker who had been trying for years to get him into treatment, looked up at him standing over her raving and unfocused. “Either leave or let me call an ambulance,” she demanded. At 34, Joseph (who, with his friend, recounted the evening in interviews with The New York Times) had been through opioid withdrawals many times — on Philadelphia streets, in jail, in rehab. But he had never experienced anything as terrifyingly all-consuming as this. A new drug has been saturating the fentanyl supply in Philadelphia and moving to other cities throughout the East and Midwestern United States: medetomidine, a powerful veterinary sedative that causes almost instantaneous blackouts and, if not used every few hours, brings on life-threatening withdrawal symptoms. It has created a new type of drug crisis — one that is occasioned not by overdosing on the drug, but by withdrawing from it. Since the middle of last year, Philadelphia’s hospitals have been strained by patients coming in with what doctors have identified as medetomidine withdrawal. Although the heart rate slows drastically right after use, in withdrawal the opposite occurs: The heart rate and blood pressure become catastrophically high. Patients experience tremors and unstoppable vomiting. Many require intensive care. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Review of Medical Cannabis Use Finds Little Evidence of Benefit

By Jan Hoffman To treat their pain, anxiety and sleep problems, millions of Americans turn to cannabis, which is now legal in 40 states for medical use. But a new review of 15 years of research concludes that the evidence of its benefits is often weak or inconclusive, and that nearly 30 percent of medical cannabis patients meet criteria for cannabis use disorder. “The evidence does not support the use of cannabis or cannabinoids at this point for most of the indications that folks are using it for,” said Dr. Michael Hsu, an addiction psychiatrist and clinical instructor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the lead author of the review, which was published last month in the medical journal JAMA. (Cannabis refers to the entire plant; cannabinoids are its many compounds.) The analysis arrives amid a surging acceptance and normalization of cannabis products, a $32 billion industry. For the review, addiction experts at academic medical centers across the country studied more than 2,500 clinical trials, guidelines and surveys conducted mostly in the United States and Canada. They found a wide gulf between the health purposes for which the public seeks out cannabis and what gold-standard science shows about its effectiveness. The researchers distinguished between medical cannabis, sold at dispensaries, and pharmaceutical-grade cannabinoids — the handful of medicines approved by the Food and Drug Administration with formulations containing either low-grade THC, a psychoactive compound, or CBD, a nonintoxicating compound. Those medicines, including Marinol, Syndros and Cesamet, are available by prescription at conventional pharmacies and have had good results in easing chemotherapy-related nausea, stimulating the appetite of patients with debilitating illnesses like H.I.V./AIDS, and easing some pediatric seizure disorders. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 14: Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Dreaming
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 10: Biological Rhythms and Sleep
Link ID: 30045 - Posted: 12.13.2025

Psilocybin rewires specific mouse cortical networks in lasting ways

By Siddhant Pusdekar A single dose of psilocybin leads to widespread network-specific changes to cortical circuitry in mice, according to a new study published today in Cell. The results help explain how psilocybin can bring about lasting changes in behavior, and they pinpoint “the neurons that are most affected,” says Andrea Gomez, assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study. Specifically, the psychedelic strengthens cortical inputs from sensory brain areas and weakens inputs into cortico-cortical recurrent loops. Overall, these network changes suggest that psychedelics reroute information in a way that enhances responses to the outside world and reduces rumination, says study investigator Alex Kwan, professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University. “This study provides some more mechanistic insight for why the drug may be a good antidepressant.” And the rewiring itself is not static, Kwan adds: “It can be influenced by manipulating neural activity” during psychedelic treatment. With this locus of psychedelic-induced changes identified, researchers can unpack how these neuronal ensembles coordinate “to create particular percepts or particular cognitions,” Gomez says. Kwan’s team focused on the mouse dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), which includes the anterior cingulate cortex—an important hub for the serotonin receptors that psilocybin targets. One dose of psilocybin increases dendritic spine growth in the medial prefrontal cortex of mice, an effect that lasts for at least a month, according to a 2021 study by Kwan’s team. And the treatment reduces the animals’ learned stress-related behaviors, but only if pyramidal tract neurons—one of the major types of excitatory neurons in the dmPFC—are active, Kwan’s group reported in April. © 2025 Simons Foundation

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 30042 - Posted: 12.06.2025

Will blockbuster obesity drugs revolutionize addiction treatment?

Elie Dolgin Last April, neuroscientist Sue Grigson received an e-mail from a man detailing his years-long struggle to kick addiction — first to opioids, and then to the very medication meant to help him quit. The man had stumbled on research by Grigson, suggesting that certain anti-obesity medications could help to reduce rats’ addiction to drugs such as heroin and fentanyl. He decided to try quitting again, this time while taking semaglutide, the blockbuster GLP-1 drug better known as Ozempic. “That’s when he wrote to me,” says Grigson, who works at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey. “He said that he was drug- and alcohol-free for the first time in his adult life.” Stories like this have been spreading fast in the past few years, through online forums, weight-loss clinics and news headlines. They describe people taking diabetes and weight-loss drugs such as semaglutide (also marketed as Wegovy) and tirzepatide (sold as Mounjaro or Zepbound) who find themselves suddenly able to shake long-standing addictions to cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs. And now, clinical data are starting to back them up. Earlier this year, a team led by Christian Hendershot, a psychologist now at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, reported in a landmark randomized trial that weekly injections of semaglutide cut alcohol consumption1 — a key demonstration that GLP-1 drugs can alter addictive behaviour in people with a substance-use disorder. More than a dozen randomized clinical studies testing GLP-1 drugs for addiction are now under way worldwide, with some results expected in the next few months. © 2025 Springer Nature Limited

Mind-altering ‘brain weapons’ no longer only science fiction

Mark Brown Sophisticated and deadly “brain weapons” that can attack or alter human consciousness, perception, memory or behaviour are no longer the stuff of science fiction, two British academics argue. Michael Crowley and Malcolm Dando, of Bradford University, are about to publish a book that they believe should be a wake-up call to the world. They are this weekend travelling to The Hague for a key meeting of states, arguing that the human mind is a new frontier in warfare and there needs to be urgent global action to prevent the weaponisation of neuroscience. “It does sound like science fiction,” said Crowley. “The danger is that it becomes science fact.” The book, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, explores how advances in neuroscience, pharmacology and artificial intelligence are coming together to create a new threat. “We are entering an era where the brain itself could become a battlefield,” said Crowley. “The tools to manipulate the central nervous system – to sedate, confuse or even coerce – are becoming more precise, more accessible and more attractive to states.” The book traces the fascinating, if appalling, history of state-sponsored research into central nervous system (CNS)-acting chemicals. During the cold war and after, the US, Soviet Union and China all “actively sought” to develop CNS-acting weapons, said Crowley. Their purpose was to cause prolonged incapacitation to people, including “loss of consciousness or sedation or hallucination or incoherence or paralysis and disorientation”. © 2025 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 30023 - Posted: 11.22.2025

CBD’s Unseen Effects on the Teenage Brain

By Nima Sadrian In the popular narrative, cannabidiol, or CBD, is portrayed as a natural, non-intoxicating cure for a host of ailments — and sometimes that extends to the anxieties of modern adolescence. CBD is everywhere, infused in products such as gummy candies, vapes, skincare serums, and even fizzy seltzers. Usually derived from the hemp plant, CBD is pitched as a calming remedy with none of the stigma of marijuana. Even a 2018 World Health Organization report noted that CBD shows no signs of abuse or dependence potential. But as a physician and neuroscientist who studies how CBD affects the developing brain, I have to offer a different, more troubling answer: We simply don’t know if it’s safe for teens. And early evidence suggests potential for real, lasting harm. The comforting story our culture tells itself about CBD — that it offers harmless, botanical relief for stress and sleep problems — is dangerously out of step with the science. While we have been sold a simple wellness narrative, my own work and that of other scientists reveal a far more complex and cautionary tale — one that challenges the very foundation of the multibillion-dollar CBD industry. How did a compound that the Food and Drug Administration has only approved as a potent prescription drug for severe childhood epilepsy become a common additive? The answer lies in a catastrophic regulatory failure. The 2018 farm bill legalized hemp, but the legislation and its extensions created no framework to ensure that the products made from it were safe, effective, or accurately labeled, nor did the bill set an age limit for it. The result is a market that operates like the Wild West, a gold rush where consumer safety is an afterthought. The FDA-approved CBD medicine, Epidiolex, comes with a long list of documented risks, including liver damage and suicidal ideation, and requires careful medical supervision. Yet numerous consumer products containing CBD are sold without such warnings, mandatory testing, or oversight.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 29991 - Posted: 11.01.2025

How Psychedelic Mushrooms Evolved Their Magic

By Rachel Nuwer No one knows why magic mushrooms evolved to produce psilocybin, a powerful psychedelic molecule. But this trait was apparently so beneficial for fungi that it independently evolved in two distantly related types of mushrooms. An even greater surprise to biologists was that rather than arriving at the same solution for producing psilocybin, the two groups pursued completely different biochemical pathways, according to a study published last month in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. “This finding reminds us that nature finds more than one way to make important molecules,” said Dirk Hoffmeister, a pharmaceutical microbiologist at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany and an author of the study. He added that it was also evidence that mushrooms were “brilliant chemists.” Practically speaking, Dr. Hoffmeister said, the research also suggested a possible new path for synthesizing psilocybin for use in scientific research and therapies. “We can expand our toolbox,” he said. Psilocybe and Inocybe mushrooms occur in some of the same habitats, but they follow different lifestyles. Psilocybe, the group that includes what are traditionally called magic mushrooms, thrives on decaying material such as decomposing organic matter or cow dung. Inocybe, commonly known as fiber caps, are symbiotic organisms that form intimate, mutually beneficial relationships with trees. In 1958, Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD, became the first researcher to isolate psilocybin from Psilocybe mushrooms. Some scientists later suspected that a few Inocybe mushrooms also produced the compound. Since then, psilocybin has been identified in around half a dozen Inocybe species. (The other species tend to produce a potent neurotoxin.) © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29985 - Posted: 10.25.2025

What Is Your Brain Doing on Psychedelics?

By Grigori Guitchounts On a mellow spring night, I gazed at the setting desert sun in Joshua Tree National Park in California. The sun glowed a warm blood-orange and the sky shimmered pink and purple. I had just defended my Ph.D. in neuroscience, and my partner and I had flown west to celebrate and exhale. It was early March 2020, and we were hoping to quiet our minds in the desert. I was also hoping to change mine. I had been curious about psychedelics for years, but it wasn’t until I read How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan about the new science of psychedelics, that I felt ready. The book made a compelling case that psychedelics provided a fascinating introspective experience. Still, I was nervous. I’d heard stories about bad trips and flashbacks. I knew enough neuroscience to know these were serious drugs—compounds that could temporarily dismantle how the brain makes sense of reality and potentially change it irreversibly. I also knew I was burned out. My Ph.D. had been hard in the way Ph.D.s often are: thrilling, lonely, disorienting. My advisor had left academia halfway through, and I’d spent years without much supervision, never quite sure whether I was on the right track and if I had a future in academia. But I didn’t take LSD seeking healing or clarity. I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. After years of hunkering down, I was craving a freeing experience. What followed was strange, intense, and beautiful. The wooden floorboards of our cabin turned into a bustling cityscape. The mirror in the bathroom showed my face aged beyond recognition: The natural lines in my skin became deep wrinkles, my eyes sunken, as if time had decided to give me a sneak peak of what would come. Later, absorbed with coloring pencils, I watched the marks I was making dissolve in real time, as if the paper were being erased by invisible rain. © 2025 NautilusNext Inc.,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29979 - Posted: 10.22.2025

Dangerous ‘nitazene’ opioids are on the rise

Mohana Basu The opioid class of drugs includes heroin and morphine. Unlike those drugs, which are derived from naturally occurring opium, nitazenes are synthesized from scratch in a laboratory. The first nitazenes were developed as painkillers in the 1950s, but were never approved for medical use because they carried a high risk of dangerous side effects such loss of consciousness, coma and death. But since 2019, there has been a rise in the reported use of nitazenes, according to the World Drug Report 2025, which was released in June. In 2023, the report states, 20 different nitazenes were seized by authorities across 28 countries and reported to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Early Warning Advisory on New Psychoactive Substances. Nitazenes can be as much as 500 times more potent than opium-derived drugs. For example, butonitazene is 2.5 times more potent than heroin, whereas isotonitazene and etonitazene are 250 and 500 times more potent, respectively. This means that just a tiny amount can be deadly. In the United Kingdom, there were 179 confirmed deaths from nitazene overdoses in the year to 31 May 2024. And reports suggest that thousands of people might have died from nitazene overdoses in the United States since 2019. In Australia, researchers note that the unpredictable presence of nitazenes in various drugs is increasing the risk of overdose in the country. Most nitazene overdoses are unintentional, says Suzanne Nielsen, an addiction researcher at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Overdose tends to occur when nitazenes are sold as other drugs, such as heroin, oxycodone and MDMA (also known as ecstasy). Overdoses can be treated with naloxone, a drug that has long been used to treat other opioid overdoses. More awareness of this among drug users and their families could help save lives, Nielsen adds. © 2025 Springer Nature Limited

Why we need basic science to better understand the neurobiology of psychedelics

By Devin Effinger, Melissa Herman Psychedelics show growing promise as treatments for a variety of psychiatric diseases. Clinical trials have demonstrated rapid and persistent improvements in major depressive disorder, for example, sparking interest among both psychiatrists and neuroscientists. However, the clinical use of psychedelics is challenging; the drugs induce prolonged visual hallucinations and must be administered and monitored by trained staff, which creates barriers in terms of their availability and accessibility. Clinical trials are also challenging. Psychedelics produce profound subjective effects that make it impossible to properly placebo-control or effectively blind participants. And given the widespread cultural fascination with these drugs, it’s difficult to remove expectancy bias—if someone strongly believes a drug will work, that can influence their perception and reporting of their outcome. Moreover, these drugs are typically delivered and tested in combination with psychotherapy. Discerning whether any treatment effects stem from the drug versus the psychotherapy, as well as the role of therapy in clinical response, is a point of debate within the field. To help resolve some of these issues, we need to better understand the neurobiological mechanisms involved. Human imaging studies have shown that some psychedelics, such as psilocybin, produce long-lasting alterations in global connectivity and negative affect. But to design more effective versions of these drugs, we need to uncover their underlying mechanisms of action at greater resolution—something that is possible only through preclinical research at the level of molecular, cellular and systems neuroscience. © 2025 Simons Foundation

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29956 - Posted: 10.04.2025

Pregnant Women Should Not Use Cannabis, New Medical Guidelines Say

By Roni Caryn Rabin Women who are pregnant, planning a pregnancy or breastfeeding should be screened for cannabis use and strongly discouraged from it, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in new clinical guidelines published on Friday. Cannabis use during pregnancy has been rising for years. Many women rely on the drug to cope with nausea and other pregnancy symptoms. But the college warned that mounting evidence linked cannabis to preterm births, low birth weights and a greater need for neonatal intensive care, as well as neurocognitive and behavioral problems in children. “Patients are often using cannabis to help with some kind of medical ailment, not recreationally — in their mind, they think it’s a more natural way to deal with a medical problem,” said Dr. Melissa Russo, an author of the new guidance. “But there are lots of natural things that are not safe,” Dr. Russo said. There are no studies demonstrating that cannabis is effective for pregnant or lactating women, she added, “and research now shows there are potential adverse effects.” The college warned against blood or urine tests for cannabis screening. Instead, it urged physicians to talk with women about their habits, and to encourage them to stop using marijuana as soon as possible while offering alternative therapies for medical ailments. The screening should be universal in an effort to avoid bias and racism, the college said. It noted that pregnant Black and Hispanic women are four to five times as likely as white women to be tested for drug use. Black women are almost five times as likely to be reported to child protective services for suspected drug use. The new guidelines say that cannabis should be discouraged among breastfeeding women, but that breastfeeding should continue even with use of the drug because the benefits most likely outweigh the potential risks. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29942 - Posted: 09.24.2025

Chimps Hit the Sauce on the Daily

By Sara Kiley Watson Humans started brewing alcohol for consumption thousands of years ago, and researchers have suggested that our ability to break down booze in our bodies has evolutionary roots dating back millions of years. Alcohol, known to scientists as ethanol, occurs naturally throughout nature, when microbes like bacteria and yeast break down sugars. This process of fermentation, harnessed by humans since ancient times, has given us the gifts of cheese, pickles, and wine, among other delights.* Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . But humans are far from the only creatures that imbibe—aye ayes, a species of lemur, will seek out nectar with a higher alcohol content, and spider monkey urine has been found to contain secondary metabolites of alcohol. Wild chimps, with whom humans share over 95 percent of our DNA, were caught on film snacking on fermenting fruit with their buddies earlier this year. Now, for the first time, researchers have discovered just how much alcohol some chimps are getting out of their fermented fruit snacks. In a new paper published in Science Advances, a team of scientists from the United States and the Ivory Coast reported that, in the course of a day, the wild chimps in their study consumed about 14 grams of pure ethanol. That’s about the equivalent, adjusting for body mass, of a human imbibing more than one standard drink a day, says University of California, Berkeley graduate student and study author Aleksey Maro. “We can say, pretty officially, that animals are chronically ingesting ethanol, especially our chimpanzee relatives,” Maro says. Maro and his colleagues made their discovery by following around wild chimps at two national parks in Africa—Kibale in Uganda and Taï in Ivory Coast—and scooping up test samples of 20 species of ripe fruits that the chimps typically like to eat. What they found is that these fruits have an average alcohol content of around 0.26 percent by weight. That might not sound like much, but primatologists at these locations estimate that chimps eat a whopping 10 pounds—or some 7 to 14 percent of their body weight—of fruit a day. The apes tended to prefer a fig called the Ficus mucuso at Kibale and the plum-esque fruit from Parinari excelsa trees at Taï. These treats were among the fruits with the highest alcohol content. © 2025 NautilusNext Inc.,

Chemicals in marijuana may affect women’s fertility

By Sofia Caetano Avritzer When Canada legalized cannabis in 2018, its effects on human health were all over the news. Cyntia Duval, a women’s health researcher at the University of Toronto at the time, wondered how its consumption might affect female fertility. To her surprise, there was almost no information on the subject — though there was plenty of data on marijuana’s effects on pregnancy and male fertility. Chemicals in cannabis may push eggs to become ready for fertilization. But this may come at a cost: more eggs with the wrong number of chromosomes, Duval and colleagues now report in a study published September 9 in Nature Communications. Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana. It binds to cannabinoid receptors in the brain. But these receptors are all over our bodies, including in our reproductive organs. The receptors usually bind endocannabinoids, molecules naturally produced by the body and essential for normal bodily functions like the production of eggs and sperm. Consuming THC can affect cannabinoid receptors in the reproductive system. Many studies report that using cannabis decreases sperm count and motility. Men are usually told to avoid cannabis for at least three months before trying to conceive, Duval says. But what about women? © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2025.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 29922 - Posted: 09.10.2025

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