Eric Lenze MD

@realJoshSiegel Congrats Drs Siegel, Nicol, Dosenbach, and others for this landmark study of psilocybin's mechanism of action in the human brain.

We tracked brain changes in healthy adults before, during, and for weeks after a large dose of psilocybin, and again 6+ months later. Psilocybin caused profound and widespread desynchronization to brain activity, altering connections across cortical networks and subcortical structures (paralleling @Carhart-Harris’s entropic brain hypothesis).

After a high dose of psilocybin, the brain desynchronizes at a massive scale, causing loss of our sense of self, time, and space. This may drive the burst of plasticity caused by psychedelics. The next day, brain activity has largely returned to normal, but an echo remains – a reset of circuits critical to the sense of self. Our study is out today in @Nature nature.com/articles/s4158…

Glad to publish a review of geroscience and mental health with Breno Diniz and colleagues in @AmJGeriPsych. sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Mental disorders accelerate aging and lead to premature mortality and dementia. Now we have pathways for intervention.

Our second COVID treatment study available to read. Negative/failed study, but great example of a fully-remote trial. academic.oup.com/ofid/article/1…

Published the (negative) results of our second fluvoxamine study for COVID. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37622035/ We couldn't replicate our initial 2020 JAMA paper - even while other researchers did. But I'm proud of the team for the study (doing a fully remote clinical trial during COVID!).

Everyone is interested in psychedelics for mental illness - but how do they work? New study out of WashU psychiatry provides answers.

@WashUDPS @PamelaWoodardp @MIRimaging Great news for our institution! Congratulations Pam!!!

We congratulate #WUPhysicianScientist Dr. Pamela Woodard as she becomes the next Head of the Department of Radiology and Director of the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology on July 1! @PamelaWoodardp @MIRimaging

Great to see more evidence of fluvoxamine's efficacy for COVID-19

I'm excited to announce that #washu psychiatry has matched 14 EXCEPTIONAL people who will make a huge positive impact in mental health. To each of you - it was great to meet you during the interviews, I look forward to seeing you again in June.

Exciting #childpsychiatry talk at #washu by Dr Kirsten Gilbert. Too much control = risk for psychiatric disorders (anxiety, depression, eating disorders). Her treatment research should help!

See NEJM today. Thanks colleagues, staff, and patients who made this happen.

@boulware_dr Hope they will but even without FDA, academic clinical trials could move the field forward.

Calling all clinical trialists! This request by #NCATS for #decentralizedtrials could be a game-changer for clinical medicine. I can't overstate how much better this could be for developing, testing, personalizing, and optimizing treatments.

How to translate neuroscience advances into new treatments for depression, anxiety, psychosis? Adam Kepecs @KepecsLab uses novel circuitry-based phenotypes to translate from mouse to human. Great talk Adam!

#Anxiety disorders in older adults are common, impairing, and treatable. That's the point of a new article by @paula_span in @nytimes: nytimes.com/2023/02/26/hea… Thanks to US Preventive Services Task Force for advocating for research on this!

Congratulations to Simone Bernstein, outstanding resident at @washu and Laughlin Fellow for the American College of Psychiatrists!

Sometimes your medically hospitalized patient has demoralization, not depression! So don't start medication and contribute to polypharmacy! That's the take-home from a great talk today at #washu psychiatry by outstanding resident Can Misel Kilciksiz MD.

Great talk this week on #autism research by Natasha Marrus at #WashU psychiatry department. It develops early in life by multiple paths -- more research needed, larger sample size studies to understand this heterogeneity.

@niallpboyce @JAMAPsych @TheLancetPsych We may gain an understanding why individuals with severe or persistent mental illness (schizophrenia, TRD) die decades younger than non-mentally ill individuals. Accelerated aging?

Enjoyed talk at #washu psychiatry today -- the renowned Dr Joan Luby told us how to overcome the cycle of poverty and adversity in child development. #nobelprize committee, are you listening?

Great article on mental health care: "...the company discovered a fundamental truth of the U.S. health system: Americans value mental health extremely highly until they have to pay for it."