Manoj Doss not exist

youtu.bePsychedelic False Memories with Hamilton Morris & Dr. Manoj DossYouTube video by Hamilton Morris

10 June

Check out my conversation with @hamiltonmorris.bsky.social on psychedelics, false memories, and more now out on YouTube! youtu.be/BuszGenKaxc?...

Manoj Doss not exist reposted

Neil Burgess

@neilburgess10.bsky.social

8 Aug

Great to see Ellie Spens’ model out! Interplay btwn episodic (hippo) & semantic (neocort’l) systems, in encoding, consolidatn, recall & problem solving with sequential info, as compressive retrieval-augmented generation. Inc gist-based distortion in stories & inference www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comHippocampo-neocortical interaction as compressive retrieval-augmented generation - Nature CommunicationsHere the authors model interactions between episodic and semantic memory as ‘retrieval-augmented generation’, explaining consolidation of structure from sequential experience, the reconstruction and d...

Manoj Doss not exist reposted

28 Aug

Have you had a creative insight related to your work/hobby that you think was due to a psychedelic experience? Please complete this survey! Note that we don't want personal insights (e.g., "I should quit my job" or "I had a bad relationship with my boss"). tiny.cc/PsychedelicsInsights

doubleblindmag.comThe Heated Debate Over How Psychedelics Work in the BrainThe entropic brain hypothesis has been the leading explanation for how psychedelics work in the brain, but new research suggests it's not that simple.

“He acknowledges that there is “ego and investment” involved in defending his ideas.” How ironic…Excellent piece, @matthabusby.bsky.social!

Mattha Busby@matthabusby.bsky.social

The battle over how psychedelics work on the brain is only just getting started. ‘We're simply engaging in scientific debate, and any accusations of a smear campaign is paranoia.’ Latest for DoubleBlind doubleblindmag.com/the-heated-d...

Go check out the exhibit in Toronto before December!

Royal Ontario Museum@romtoronto.bsky.social

How do psychedelics impact the brain? There are a few leading theories, and Dr. @manojdoss.bsky.social (Associate Professor, The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School) explores one of them here.

Came for TV on the Radio (& Beach House & The Strokes), stayed for @aoc.bsky.social & @sanders.senate.gov. What a family experience in NYC with my sister, brother-in-law, & my revolutionary wife Lucía.

jneurosci.orgThe Physiological Role of 5-HT2A Receptors in Working MemoryDorsolateral prefrontal cortex has an essential role in the cognitive process of working memory, dysfunction of which is considered to be a core deficit in schizophrenia. Although this cortical region...

Interesting when 1) a 5-HT2A agonist sharpened neural tuning/precision of working memory representations (www.jneurosci.org/content/22/7...) and 2) working memory capacity (rather than precision) tends to be more readily impaired by 5-HTA psychedelics compared to NMDA dissociatives.

Bertoglio lab (FMC/UFSC)@bertogliolab.bsky.social

Ketamine Alters Tuning of Neural and Behavioral Spatial Working Memory Precision www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S000...

biologicalpsychiatryjournal.comKetamine Alters Tuning of Neural and Behavioral Spatial Working Memory PrecisionWorking memory (WM) is a key element of cognition that depends on accurate internal representation of stimuli and often impaired in psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. Prior human neuropha...

Together, *might* suggest dissociable effects of psychedelics and dissociatives on WM capacity vs. precision: capacity less impaired by dissociatives, precision less impaired or even enhanced by psychedelics.

aeon.coA scientist’s search for answers about Amanita muscaria gummies | Aeon EssaysWhen I found the mushroom Amanita muscaria being sold in candy wrappers, I uncovered legal loopholes, dangerous dosages and more

“Muscimol killed mice at a lower dose than nearly all psychotropic drugs we examined, including fentanyl.” That can’t be right when muscimol is active in milligrams and fentanyl is active in micrograms.

Mike Jay@mikejay.bsky.social

aeon.co/essays/a-sci...

Manoj Doss not exist reposted

Sam Cooper PhD

@samcooper.bsky.social

21 Sept

Culmination of many years of work and thought in my little sub area of psych and neuro. Big thanks to @gushennings.bsky.social and @plaing94.bsky.social for helping bring this one home. We hope it provokes thought and improvement in the realm of fear generalization research.

Gus Hennings@gushennings.bsky.social

Excited to share that our review on "The next generation of fear generalization" is now in press in TICS! (www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...). Led by @samcooper.bsky.social, we review human and animal neuroscience of fear generalization and offer suggestions for future translational research.

sciencedirect.comsciencedirect.com

link.springer.comResetting the hippocampal buffer: a neurocognitive account of psychedelic therapy for anxiety-related psychopathology - PsychopharmacologyPsychedelics (hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists such as psilocybin) are being investigated for their potential to treat a range of conditions, including anxiety-related psychopathology. Despite promising...

20 Sept

We got a new review/model on why we think psychedelics might be particularly useful in the treatment of anxiety-related disorders. link.springer.com/article/10.1... Good work @htmcgovern.bsky.social on carrying this through the finish line.

Manoj Doss not exist reposted

M.J. Crockett

@mjcrockett.bsky.social

13 Sept

I used to love this time of year, hearing from students applying to work in my lab. No more. Every day a fresh batch of nearly identical emails with nonsensical remixes of the text on my lab website. It makes me so sad.

tandfonline.comCharacterizing Psychedelic-Evoked Familiarity: A Comparative Study with Autobiographical and Déjà Vu ExperiencesPsychedelic experiences often evoke a sense of familiarity, an experiential quality that has received little empirical attention despite its potential therapeutic and cognitive significance. This s...

11 Sept

New paper on the phenomenology of heightened familiarity under psychedelics! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

10 Sept

Wow. Jim Pekar is so ahead of his time that he's publishing in the future!

9 Sept

I had an incredible visit to Toronto, and it was such an honor to see my work on display at the psychedelics exhibit at @romtoronto.bsky.social. They worked so hard on this, so please check it out before December 6! #lakeontario

9 Sept

My chapter in the exhibit book! I should have taken more pics, but I had to capture the fact that they included Kid Cudi among psychedelic music (something I 100% agree with!)

9 Sept

Lastly, it was great catching meeting my soon-to-be co-author David Lawrence. Watch this space for more bizarre psychedelic effects on familiarity!

2 Sept

Austin, TX & surrounding community: We're testing the effects of psychedelics on brain function & cognition. This is not for mental health treatment, and there'll be several cognitive tasks (no lying on a couch or eyeshades), but you'll be supporting science! Please share!

28 Aug

direct.mit.eduEnhanced Episodic Memory Encoding Following Modulation of the Amygdala via Transcranial Low-intensity Focused UltrasoundAbstract. The amygdala is considered crucial to the formation of emotional episodic memories, yet causal evidence in humans is limited due to challenges in noninvasive neuromodulation of deep brain st...

Finally out in @JOCN_Journal. We had hoped to inhibit the amygdala using transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) as a proof-of-concept that the amygdala is causally involved in emotional episodic memory encoding, but this backfired…1/10 direct.mit.edu/jocn/article...

pnas.orgPNASProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

2 decades ago, work by Bryan Strange & others suggested a filtering function of the amygdala including less filtering in patients w/amygdala lesions. 9/10 www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... doi.org/10.1523/JNEU... doi.org/10.1523/JNEU... doi.org/10.1017/S003... doi.org/10.1515/REVN...

Thanks Joey Dunsmoor for doing what I thought would be a necessary but not necessarily groundbreaking study that ended up raising more questions. He just had an R21 awarded in which we’ll attempt a replication and use fMRI and more advanced methods for amygdala targeting. 10/10

A study by @brainscout.bsky.social found intracranial amygdala stimulation immediately after the presentation of a stimulus enhanced memory. One interpretation could be they turned up the filter AFTER a stimulus was processed which reduced retroactive interference. 7/10 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I realize this reinterpretation of amygdala function based on new-ish technology that we don’t fully understand is massively speculative, but we’re not the first to suggest that the amygdala may act as a filter. 8/10

Assuming this tFUS protocol is in fact inhibitory, what could be happening? There’s a lot of speculation in the discussion, but one possibility is that instead of the amygdala enhancing the processing of salient stimuli, it instead filters non-salient information. 5/10

Both salience amplification & filtering would produce enhancements in emo vs neutral memory but only a filtering account would predict that inhibiting the amygdala would enhance memory (letting more stuff in). Likewise enhancing amygdala function should turn up filtering &…6/10

We also found that tFUS enhanced fear discrimination in faces, which correlated with the memory enhancements (thanks to a reviewer for this suggestion!) 3/10

doi.orgLow-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound amygdala neuromodulation: a double-blind sham-controlled target engagement study and unblinded single-arm clinical trial - Molecular PsychiatryMolecular Psychiatry - Low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound amygdala neuromodulation: a double-blind sham-controlled target engagement study and unblinded single-arm clinical trial

This tFUS protocol inhibits BOLD fMRI activity tho this isn’t definitive that it’s inhibitory. Greg Fonzo (a co-author) found 15 daily sessions w/this protocol was therapeutic in depression, anxiety, and PTSD in which the amygdala is thought to be on “overdrive.” 4/10 doi.org/10.1038/s413...

Instead, we enhanced episodic memory (regardless of emotion)! tFUS was administered to the left amygdala before memory encoding & memory was tested on a couple different tests 24 hours later, presumably when tFUS effects dissipate, thereby minimizing effects on retrieval. 2/10

Manoj Doss not exist reposted

Jörn Alexander Quent

@jaquent.bsky.social

13 Aug

Most of us agree that impact factor is a flawed measure/concept but I still wonder what happened to all these solid small journals, which now barely get above 1? There are memory journals, which when I started studying in the 2010s were really good but now all suffer from this decline.

youtube.comRaquel Kosted | ICPR 2026 | OPEN FoundationYouTube video by OPEN Foundation

31 July

Peep what Raquel Kosted and I had to say during ICPR 2026! Raquel - www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwWL... Me - www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e2f... (I was recovering from a cold, so I probably sound funny)

Manoj Doss not exist reposted

Leah Banellis

@leahbanellis.bsky.social

23 July

Sensing your body (‘Interoception’) is everywhere in theories of mental health. But when we tested how well hundreds of people sensed their heart and lungs, the link to symptoms was almost nowhere to be found. 💣 🚨New @natmentalhealth.nature.com paper 🚨🎉 asks why 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Manoj Doss not exist reposted

Bita Moghaddam

@bita137.bsky.social

21 July

Our new study ⬇️inspired by the question: does psilocybin influence meta-learning and cortical processing of unexpected uncertainty? Why is this important? Meta-learning may be critical for therapeutic effects of psychedelics and how the trip creates a window that facilitates clinical intervention

themicrodose.substack.comDo psychedelics create false memories? 5 Questions with psychologist Samuli KangaslampiKangaslampi discusses the need to study autobiographical memories that may emerge during trips.

3 July

Peep my dude Samuli’s (@kangaslampi.bsky.social) interview on psychedelics and (false) memory recovery by the inimitable Shayla Love (@shaylalove.bsky.social). “…perhaps it’s never too late to have a traumatic childhood if you really go looking for it.” Brilliant!

sciencedirect.comPsychedelics do not always enhance cognitive flexibility: The potential role of time-varying effects on reward learning processesAlthough research on psychedelics (hallucinogenic serotonin 2 A or 5-HT2A agonists) has shown initial promise in ameliorating a range of psychiatric c…

Check out our recent review on how psychedelics don’t simply enhance cognitive flexibility by Raquel Kosted, @drjjdonegan.bsky.social, Josh Cisler, and Greg Fonzo. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/12

nature.comPrinciples of cognitive control over task focus and task switching - Nature Reviews PsychologyAdaptive behaviour requires the ability to maintain focus on a task and to flexibly switch tasks, depending on the context. In this Perspective, Egner integrates the task focus and task switching lite...

Researchers in cognitive neuroscience (eg, @tobiasegner.bsky.social) have also come to the conclusion that the stability-flexibility conceptualization is an oversimplification, and instead, different learning processes may better capture flexible decision-making. www.nature.com/articles/s44... 12/12

authors.elsevier.comPlease wait whilst we redirect youAll content on this site: Copyright © 2026 Elsevier B.V., its licensors, and contributors. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. For all open access content, the relevant licensing terms apply.

If you made it this far, here's a free version of the article available 'til July 25! authors.elsevier.com/c/1nDcaY3M3p...

Perhaps if someone w/addiction relapses following psychedelic therapy, they may even be able to better realize that their addiction is no longer bringing them the rewards that they experienced when their addiction began (tho I realize this is a pretty big conceptual leap). 10/12

This model is certainly oversimplified, but it better captures the literature than the unidimensional stability-flexibility continuum, and what’s interesting is that recently...11/12

Perhaps this could relate to how during acute psychedelic effects, one can have a grandiose idea that can be borderline delusional. However, this can be offset by the post-acute enhancements in learning from reward omission…8/12

When one’s grandiose idea turns out to not produce the rewards they may expect, they may quickly learn that this idea is not worth pursuing, hence most people not feeding into a bizarre idea conjured up on psychedelics. 9/12

Both of these processes seem to get enhanced during the acute and post-acute effects, but learning from reward receipt is disproportionately enhanced during acute effects, whereas learning from reward omission is more enhanced post-acutely. 6/12

While this model isn’t perfect, it does capture tendencies in the literature. For example, during acute psychedelic effects, learning that a stimulus is rewarding can be so enhanced that one may perseverate such that learning a new stimulus is rewarding may become difficult. 7/12

During Raquel first year, I put her up to the task of reviewing the literature and seeing if she could delineate the conditions (e.g., tasks, timing of drug, pharmacology of drug, etc.) that produce the varied results. 4/12

I didn’t tell Raquel to frame this around learning & memory, but to my delight as a memory researcher, she came up with a model that involved two learning processes that largely captured the literature: learning from reward receipt and learning from reward omission. 5/12

nature.comPsilocybin therapy increases cognitive and neural flexibility in patients with major depressive disorder - Translational PsychiatryTranslational Psychiatry - Psilocybin therapy increases cognitive and neural flexibility in patients with major depressive disorder

So the idea for this review started while I was writing this paper www.nature.com/articles/s41.... I realized that there were several animal & human studies on psychedelics and cognitive flexibility, some showing impairments, some showing enhancements, and some showing no effects. 2/12

Some have said that this is because the brain is on a unidimensional stability-flexibility continuum, & the acute effects of psychedelics tip it too far into flexibility while the post-acute effects make the brain just flexible enough. As we discuss, this is far too simple. 3/12

nature.comIndividual locomotor bias drives counterclockwise motion in pedestrian crowds - Nature CommunicationsCounterclockwise motion has been documented in human gatherings. The authors show across five experiments in Spain and Japan that this bias reflects individual locomotor tendencies.

20 June

This is interesting to me because in rollerblading, I tend to see more left vs. right spinners, including myself (see clip below). Left spinners will even do tricks/grinds with their non-dominant foot/feet positioning to avoid spinning to the right, something I rarely see with right spinners.

Anxo Sánchez@anxo.eurosky.social

If you start moving the odds are you'll do it in counterclockwise circles. Believe it or not, it's true. We proved it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Thanks Iñaki Echeverría and the Navarra Granular Lab gang for letting me be a part of this amazing paper!

theatlantic.comThe New Science of Psychedelic DrugsUniversity researchers are looking for ways to engineer better mind-altering therapeutic experiences

15 June

Was quoted in @theatlantic.com regarding efforts to create new psychedelic drugs. Lol they mention my disdain for the overhyped Hopkins playlist. www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/...

arxiv.orgContemporary AI lacks the imagination to diverge or negate in scienceBold projections that artificial intelligence will accelerate scientific discovery have raced ahead of evidence from working scientists, and the field still lacks large-scale, scientist-in-the-loop te...

11 June

"AI's imagination is bounded by what has already been written in the training corpora. Non-reasoning language models collapse into a narrow "hivemind" of similar ideas." arxiv.org/abs/2606.08251 I've reviewed a couple AI-written papers now, and this was exactly my thoughts. 1/2