Tommaso Barba Profile picture
PhD candidate at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London 🧠 🍄 // tb21@ic.ac.uk @Imperial_PRG @imperialcollege
Apr 29 8 tweets 3 min read
1/ A new preprint suggests that people taking #MDMA at the time of the terror attack at the Supernova music festival in Israel might have been less affected by #trauma, shedding light on MDMA's role in trauma processing.

A breakdown: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
Image 2/ The study involved 657 survivors, capturing their acute experiences and peritraumatic processing after the high-casualty event. Data were collected between 4 to 12 weeks post-trauma. Image
Dec 28, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
1/ How does taking a NON-hallucinogenic “#psychedelic” compound feels like?

An interesting blog report on the compound Tabernanthalog used in #DavidOlson Lab came out today, suggesting it induced a feeling of an almost “supernatural patience”, without any visual effect. 🧘 In 2021, David E Olson’s lab reported the creation of Tabernanthalog, aiming at improving Ibogaine’s toxicity and hallucinogenic issues. This new substance proved non-toxic and non-hallucinogenic in animal models and reversed the effects of stress. nature.com/articles/s4138…
Jun 1, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
1/ The first study on the effects of 2C-B has just been published! 🍭

By comparing 2C-B to #psilocybin it was found that the two drugs induced similar subjective alterations, with 2C-B possessing less experiential depth than psilocybin but greater euphoric and bodily qualities. Image 2/ 2C-B was found to elicit significant elevations across most scales outside of auditory alterations, disembodiment, and spiritual experience. However, the overall magnitude of alterations to waking consciousness (total 5D-ASC score) was markedly less than that of psilocybin.
Jan 25, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
1/ The short acting psychedelic DMT might induce long term improvements in depression, according to new preliminary data. These are the first data showing that a psychedelic experience of around 30 mins might have therapeutic potential. Below a breakdown of results: Image 2 / @SmallPharma released today new data showing that DMT therapy induced a decrease of -7.4 points in MADRAS at 2 weeks compared to placebo. At 1 week, 44% of patients classified the criteria for remission from depression, compared to 13% of patients in the placebo group. Image
Nov 23, 2022 10 tweets 2 min read
(1/9) “What do common antidepressants really do? Are they just placebos?” Despite being the most common drugs prescribed in psychiatry, many recent popular articles highlighted how they might be just placebos with side effects. But is this really the case? Probably not. Image (2/9) If you look at the first graph, all ADs seem to have very similar efficacy. This is quite remarkable, as most of these drugs work on totally different receptors.This suggests that there might be some common mechanism behind the effects, not just explainable by pharmacology.
Sep 6, 2022 7 tweets 4 min read
My first 1st author paper is out in @TheBJPsych ! We found out that psilocybin is superior in reducing rumination and chronic suppression of negative emotions compared to escitalopram. Big thanks to @RCarhartHarris and @LeorRoseman for the guidance. #Psilocybin #psychiatry #LSD Image Rumination and thought suppression are 2 maladaptive coping strategies and, despite appearing sort of opposite, they reinforce each others (suppressed thoughts usually come back stronger, fuelling rumination).