Paper on MDA in PLoS One

[Blowmonkey]

Maybe an interesting read:

Please allow me to indulge in a little self-promotion: My colleagues and I have a new paper out on the effects of MDA in healthy volunteers, published in the open access online journal PLoS One. This study was NIH-supported, although I received some important early support from The Beckley Foundation. This is the first study of MDA in people in over 30 years. It is also the second study I know of to measure mystical-type experiences with a validated measure in volunteers receiving a psychedelic in a controlled clinical setting. Because the paper is published in a Public Library of Science journal, anyone can read it at the official journal website:

http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014074

One interesting point that we don’t discuss in the article is that this dose of racemic MDA clearly lasts longer than an equivalent dose of MDMA, which has been discussed on erowid. We are preparing a second paper that will address in more detail some of the similarities and differences of MDA and MDMA. One could also compare MDA to a classical hallucinogen, such as psilocybin. Here is a plot comparing average ratings made by our participants after placebo (black circles) and MDA (green circles) to psilocybin data (blue shapes) from other groups’ studies.



The top box shows scores from the Hood Mysticism Scale. The middle box shows scores from Dittrich’s Altered States of Consciousness questionnaire (ASC, or APZ-OAV, or sometimes just OAV), which was recently the topic of this interesting paper in PLOS One. The bottom box shows scores from the traditional clusters of the ASC Visionary Changes (commonly called “Visionary Restructuralization” in the literature) scale. For more information on these measures, you can read our paper or the other one in PLOS one. This figure is similar to one of the figures in the article, but I have added data from these two papers:

1) (blue squares) R. R. Griffiths, W. A. Richards, U. McCann, R. Jesse. Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained
personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology, 2006. 187:268-283.


2) (blue triangles) F. Hasler, U. Grimberg, M.A. Benz, T. Huber, F.X. Vollenweider. Acute psychological and physiological effects of psilocybin in healthy humans: a double-blind, placebo-controlled dose–effect study. Psychopharmacology, 2004. 172:145-156.

I should note that it is a little risky to compare our participants to those of the Griffiths study because those individuals were hallucinogen-naïve and all had some type of spiritual practice. In addition they wore blindfolds throughout much of the drug administration session.

http://psychedelicresearch.org/?p=132

Investigating the Mechanisms of Hallucinogen-Induced Visions Using 3,4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA): A Randomized Controlled Trial in Humans


Background
The mechanisms of drug-induced visions are poorly understood. Very few serotonergic hallucinogens have been studied in humans in decades, despite widespread use of these drugs and potential relevance of their mechanisms to hallucinations occurring in psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Methodology/Principal Findings
We investigated the mechanisms of hallucinogen-induced visions by measuring the visual and perceptual effects of the hallucinogenic serotonin 5-HT2AR receptor agonist and monoamine releaser, 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), in a double-blind placebo-controlled study. We found that MDA increased self-report measures of mystical-type experience and other hallucinogen-like effects, including reported visual alterations. MDA produced a significant increase in closed-eye visions (CEVs), with considerable individual variation. Magnitude of CEVs after MDA was associated with lower performance on measures of contour integration and object recognition.

Conclusions/Significance
Drug-induced visions may have greater intensity in people with poor sensory or perceptual processing, suggesting common mechanisms with other hallucinatory syndromes. MDA is a potential tool to investigate mystical experiences and visual perception.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0014074

 

[any major dude]

read this the other day. thought it was cool they used healthy volunteers & that it wasn't a treatment type study. I'm all for all the medical applications of psychedelics, but there are plenty of legitimate non-medical uses for these as well.