Veterans Affairs officials announced a $1.5 million grant to study MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol use disorder among veterans. This is the first department-funded research on psychedelic benefits in more than five decades.

The newly-funded study will take place at the Providence VA Medical Center in Rhode Island and West Haven VA Medical Center in Connecticut. Researchers affiliated with Brown University and Yale University will oversee the work, and begin enrolling participants early next year. Check it out: https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2024/12/03/va-awards-15-million-to-study-using-psychedelics-for-ptsd-treatment/

MindMed, Inc. announced that its pharmaceutically optimized form of LSD, MM120 ODT, was granted an Innovation Passport for the potential treatment of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) by the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

The Innovation Passport is the entry point to the Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway (ILAP), which aims to accelerate time to market and facilitate patient access to medicines in the U.K. 

Recipients of the Innovation Passport are granted access to a range of development tools to support the design, development, and approvals process in the U.K., as well as opportunities for enhanced regulatory and other stakeholder input. Specific benefits of ILAP include the potential for a 150-day accelerated Marketing Authorization Application assessment, rolling review and a continuous benefit risk assessment. Here’s more: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241205425128/en/

A new study published in the JAMA Network explored psilocybin’s potential to alleviate depression, burnout, and PTSD in healthcare workers who provided frontline care during the pandemic. 

Researchers found that psilocybin therapy resulted in a significant, sustained reduction in symptoms of depression experienced by clinicians after frontline work during COVID-19. As well, the participants of the study registered a “rapid and sustained response.” Check it out: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2827553?utm_campaign=articlePDF&utm_medium=articlePDFlink&utm_source=articlePDF&utm_content=jamanetworkopen.2024.49026

Did you know that neuroscientists have discovered a new pathway to forming long-term memories in the brain?

According to a study published in Nature Neuroscience, long-term memory may form independently of short-term memory, which now opens up possibilities for understanding memory-related conditions. 

As Max Planck from the Florida Institute for Neuroscience explains, our brain works diligently to record our experiences into memories, creating representations of our daily events that stay with us for short time periods. Current scientific theories of memory formation suggest that short-term memories are stored in what we can imagine as a temporary art exhibition in our brain before being cleared out for representations of new experiences.

A tiny fraction of these short-term memories – those most relevant to us – are moved to a more permanent exhibit, our long-term memory, where they are stored for days, years, or decades.

The most prevalent theories suggest this is a linear process. Our experience is encoded into a short-term memory, which is then consolidated into a long-term memory. However, this new study suggests that there may be another way to long-term memory formation. Check it out: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-12-neuroscientists-pathway-term-memories-brain.html