Anesthesia is just like dreamless sleep, right? RIGHT? Cover story @anesthesiology.bsky.social this month - we developed an operating room protocol to promote dreaming during emergence from anesthesia... under the best conditions we found that **93%** of patients had experiences

Atlantic article discussing current/novel psychedelics, emphasizing parameters like expectancies, context, compound, dose, etc. There is SO MUCH scientific work to do to improve on preliminary work & explore altering variables that have not yet been tested! www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/...

The best line of this article about “researchers” designing better psychedelic pills to treat mental illness is by @theborislab.bsky.social “If context didn’t matter…the average rave attendee would be a guru”🙌 www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/...

The federal government is fast-tracking psychedelic clinical trials for mental health. Stanford anesthesiologist Boris Heifets @theborislab.bsky.social joins us to discuss psilocybin, ibogaine, clinical trials, and the evolution of psychedelic medicine. neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/fdas-ps...

🚨 New science alert! Our cross-species study, now in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrates psychedelics distort how we should interpret functional brain imaging. 👇🧵 nature.com/articles/s41... #Neuroscience #Psychedelics #BrainImaging

And I want to thank the wonderful reviewers (among them was @theborislab.bsky.social )who made the paper all that much stronger

Interested in bridging the translatability gap between mice and humans, specifically with regard to psychedelics? Have I got an opportunity for you! Join us for an interactive and stimulating pre-meeting before #SfN2025. @theborislab.bsky.social @bita37.bsky.social @fredbarrettphd.bsky.social

Interested in bridging the translatability gap between mice and humans, specifically with regard to psychedelics? Have I got an opportunity for you! Join us for an interactive and stimulating pre-meeting before #SfN2025. @theborislab.bsky.social @bita37.bsky.social @fredbarrett.bsky.social

Amazing lineup! And I promise we won’t just bash forced swim tests

Excited to share our latest publication -- psychedelic drugs can enhance synaptic connectivity of neurons not expressing 5-HT2ARs (but requiring 5-HT2AR expression in the input neurons -- lots in the supplementals too!) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Meet one of the winning teams of our MapMySections challenge! 🧠📈 Daniel Rijsketic, Austen Casey, and @theborislab.bsky.social developed UNRAVEL, a tool that precisely maps fluorescent labels across the mouse brain. Join us on 8/27 for a webinar and live demo: alleninstitute.org/events/mapmy...

🎯 Algorithm Accuracy Award 🎯 Daniel Ryskamp Rijsketic, Austen Casey, and @theborislab.bsky.social (StanfordMedicine.bsky.social) created UNRAVEL, a Python library for whole-brain fluorescent label mapping: b-heifets.github.io/UNRAVEL/

Hope this paper gets some recognition. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Basic pharmacological principles are kinda important for experimental design.

#GRCPsychedelics - What a blast! It was great to talk science with so many incredible people in the field. Can't wait to do it all over again!

So happy the first #GRCPsychedelics was such a success. It was great to see everyone and share all the amazing science and community. Thank you to all the speakers and congratulations to the travel awardees!!

So grateful to @alexkwan.bsky.social and @vyazovskiy.bsky.social for such a great program. Excited to plan for 2027 with @viditavaidya.bsky.social and new vice chairs @theborislab.bsky.social and @mikaelpalner.bsky.social

I’ve been really feeling down recently, feeling a lot of stress around my job situation + coming to terms with identity shift. Being at the GRC has filled me with such love, such a sense of community and reminded me of my hard work and that I can continue to inspire people. Thank you ❤️

We’ve got some with psilocybin and nicotine withdrawal that we really should publish!

How much is the psychedelic experience influenced by what we see, hear and read? We made a way to measure it: The Psychedelic Media Exposure Questionnaire - developed by Audrey Evers, Chris Kelly, @shaylalove.bsky.social , @tehseennoorani.bsky.social, validated on >600 respondents. Link below:

This seems relevant to psychedelic research, where expectancy is still often viewed only as a baseline variable. We should also consider its dynamic changes, how (psychedelic & other) treatment experiences influence them, and their impact on outcomes. @psybalazs.bsky.social @theborislab.bsky.social

Great lineup of speakers from preclinical to clinical, drug discovery to plasticity, and animals to human research. 🔥 @argelaguilarvalles.bsky.social @rcbagot.bsky.social @fredbarrettphd.bsky.social @theborislab.bsky.social @kepecslab.bsky.social @nuro-science.bsky.social @amykooz.bsky.social ...

The final episode of Season 4 of Psychedelic Brain Science discusses a recent preprint that gets at the heart of reproducibility in science. This body of work titled "A multi-institutional investigation of psilocybin's effects on mouse behavior" can be found on BioRxiv!

Does ketamine reset the placebo response? Some interesting links emerging between opioids, placebo antidepressant responses, and maybe a ketamine mechanism to links them. Thx PsyPost for the writeup, lead author Theresa Lii. PsyPost write up here:

What an afternoon! Never quite expected to have a serious conversation about drugs and dreaming, recorded no less - thank you Heather and Christof!

Can altering cognitive states under anesthesia impact trauma? @theborislab.bsky.social, Dr. Berlin, and Meritorious Investigator Dr. Christof Koch explore the latest research on Ketamine, the placebo effect, and the potential impact of anesthesia-induced dreams. 🧠✨ 📺 youtu.be/ssbz0nKVw5Q 🧠📈

I spoke to @theborislab.bsky.social & @alexkwan.bsky.social about a new preprint that has caused lots of discussion among psychedelics researchers. The 5-lab study failed to replicate many of the more exciting persistent effects of psilocybin in mice. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is a very important paper That will be discussed for many years

A much-needed joint effort from five labs to see which behavioral effects of psilocybin in mice are reliable, and which may be spurious 🐁🍄 @theborislab.bsky.social @mazenkheirbek.bsky.social @indigenerd.bsky.social Vikaas Sohal and Stephan Lammel 👏 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sleep people- any experience w home sleep staging via wearable that allows access to raw data? Thinking re Oura, Fitbit or Whoop.

Everyone should do a study with @theborislab.bsky.social..!

Join me in being a research subject for the @theborislab.bsky.social dream study. It is a civic duty to be a participant as well as a researcher. I am wearing an EEG cap, face muscle and cardiac monitors etc. I hope my data helps patients with #ptsd dream better. Thx Pillerin Sikka and Ben Deveret

We’ve done this is humans. Paper in submission …

Dream study with @theborislab.bsky.social @laurahack34.bsky.social @acnporg.bsky.social join me in being a research subject!

I am a researcher and now I am a research subject in @theborislab.bsky.social & @laurahack.bsky.social dream induction study. I am at ACNP with Laura who is presenting a poster describing it @acnporg.bsky.social

Could one envision a synthetic receptor technology that is fully programmable, able to detect diverse extracellular antigens – both soluble and cell-attached – and convert that recognition into a wide range of intracellular responses, from gene expression and real-time fluorescence to modulation..

I am excited that my first Bluesky post is to share our new paper in @natureportfolio.bsky.social - "Understanding the neural code of stress to control anhedonia." With @fxia.bsky.social , @valeriafascianelli.bsky.social and @stefanofusi.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am a research subject in a highly innovative study that will look at whether anesthesia induced dream states can help patients with PTSD. I will explain more as I progress through the initial phase which will optimize dream induction. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38476046/ @theborislab.bsky.social

hi! still growing this list of amazing peeps! go.bsky.app/32Le3SU

My paper is out!! 🎉 "Opponent control of reinforcement by striatal dopamine and serotonin", @Nature Here, we show that dopamine and serotonin signals form a gas-brake system for reward in the mammalian brain THREAD ⬇️ 1/n

Has anyone ever just withdrawn a paper from a journal? We have an exciting finding that's been "with the editor" for six weeks, *after* reviews are in. At least two people reviewed. Editors aren't responding. Seems wild to completely stall at this stage.

How to get your psychedelic research proposal funded? 📝 @sofiyahupalo.bsky.social (NIMH) and Tanya Ramey (NIDA) will hold an informal panel to discuss institute goals and funding priorities at the #GRCPsychedelics 7/13-7/18/2025 Registration for the meeting is open - www.grc.org/neurobiology...

Dream Science 2.0 — AKA New Strategies for the Cognitive Science of Dreaming - Online ahead of print in Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2024 doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2024.10.004. by Remington Mallett, Karen R Konkoly, Tore Nielsen, Michelle Carr, and Ken A Paller

1/12 New paper on psychedelics as treatments for mental health problems is out! We discuss 10 challenges which limit conclusions that can be drawn about safety/efficacy of psychedelic therapy. We share a checklist for journalists, policymakers & others to assess quality of studies. Brief thread: