New research suggests that it could be possible to separate treatment from hallucinations when developing new drugs based on psychedelics. The anti-anxiety and hallucination-inducing qualities of psychedelic drugs work through different neural circuits, according to research using a mouse model. The research shows that decoupling the beneficial effects of psychedelics from their hallucinogenic effects isn’t just a matter of chemical compound design. It’s a matter of targeted neural circuitry.

Our bodies are pharmaceutical factories. From the hormones that regulate our blood sugar to the neurotransmitters that act as the body’s natural painkillers, these endogenous — produced within the body — chemicals ensure our functionality and survival. 

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a rapid, noninvasive tool to track the neurons and biomolecules activated in the brain by psychedelic drugs. The protein-based tool, which is called Ca2+-activated Split-TurboID, or CaST, is described in research published in Nature Methods.

The University of California, Davis, has launched the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics to advance basic knowledge about the mechanisms of psychedelics and translate it into safe and effective treatments for diseases such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, among others. 

Location, location, location is the key for psychedelic drugs that could treat mental illness by rapidly rebuilding connections between nerve cells. In a paper published Feb. 17 in Science, researchers at the University of California, Davis, show that engaging serotonin 2A receptors inside neurons promotes growth of new connections but engaging the same receptor on the surface of nerve cells does not.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus plan to screen hundreds of compounds to discover new, nonhallucinogenic treatments for substance use disorders. The research is funded by a $2.7 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Currently, the most effective way to test an experimental drug to see if it causes hallucinations is the “head twitch” assay in rodents. “Scientific studies on psychedelic drugs have been conducted since the 1940s but we still don’t have an effective cellular assay for them,” said David Olson, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, College of Letters and Science at UC Davis and a co-author on the paper.

A non-hallucinogenic version of the psychedelic drug ibogaine, with potential for treating addiction, depression and other psychiatric disorders, has been developed by researchers at the University of California, Davis.