‘WHILE THERE’S GROWING evidence that psychedelic drugs can effectively treat severe mental health conditions, especially in cases where traditional treatments have failed, they still come with downsides.

Their hallucinogenic effects can be scary and overwhelming, with dosing sessions lasting several hours. Good treatment is heavily reliant on the individual’s mindset going into a session and the environment in which they receive it. And though it’s rare, psychedelics can sometimes worsen existing mental illness.

Mindstate Design Labs is one of a slate of new companies aiming to make safer psychedelics by removing the classic “trip” associated with them. The company is using AI to help design psychedelic-like drugs that induce specific mental states without hallucinations, and its first compound looks promising.

“We created the least psychedelic psychedelic that’s psychoactive,” says CEO Dillan DiNardo. “It is quite psychoactive, but there are no hallucinations.”…’ —Emily Mullin via WIRED

‘One of the cruellest and most devastating diseases – Huntington’s – has been successfully treated for the first time, say doctors.

The disease runs through families, relentlessly kills brain cells and resembles a combination of dementia, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease.

An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.

It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of “good quality life”, Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News.

The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery.…’ — via BBC

This was the disease that Woody Guthrie, among others, succumbed to. The cases of Huntington’s I have seen have been terrifying, relentless, and uncontrollable. This is momentous exciting news.