About this Research Topic
According to the WHO, traditional medicine is “the sum total of the knowledge, skill, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness”. There are many different systems of traditional medicine and their philosophy and practices have distinct influences. However, a common philosophy is a holistic approach to life, equilibrium of the mind, the body, and the environment, and an emphasis on health rather than on disease processes.
Natural products are in general rich in a variety of compounds; many of them are secondary metabolites, aromatic and non-aromatic substances. About 200 years ago, the first pharmacologically active pure compound, the isoquinoleic alkaloid morphine, was extracted from the seeds pods of the opium poppy Papaver somniferum L. After this compound, many others were isolated from natural sources, showing that drugs from plants could be purified and administered in precise dosages.
The potential therapeutic application of the natural matrices is closely dependent on the chemical class(es) of their compounds. Psychoactive natural products research, both alone or in mixtures of different species, has increased in the recent years. A good example is Ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew used throughout the upper Amazonian Region in traditional medicine, with strong spirituality inducing power, which has been used by rain forest populations during religious ceremonies. The term Ayahuasca is a Quechua compound word meaning, “vine of the (dead) spirits”, which is related to its strong effects on perception, emotions, and thinking. Usually, Ayahuasca brew is made out of two plants: Banisteriopsis caapi (Spruce ex Griseb.) Morton, a liana of the Malpighiaceae family and Psychotria viridis Ruiz & Pav., a shrub of the Rubiaceae family. Ayahuasca users often report experiences of “transcendency” which includes visions of a spiritual reality, an altered sense of space and time, increased sense of intuition insights, out of body experiences, and feelings of uniqueness merged with a dissolution of boundaries between one’s self and others. Understanding the mechanisms underlying these effects in the brain could potentially provide insights for new therapeutic approaches for various brain diseases and disorders.
Under this Research Topic, authors are welcome to submit their research on natural products (plants, mushrooms, etc.) with psychoactive properties. Some suggested topics are:
- Identifying new clinical applications in neuropsychiatric disorders.
- Probing mechanisms of action underlying psychological manifestations.
- Encapsulation in drug delivery.
- Potentially addictive properties of psychoactive drugs.
- Applications in pain research.
- Contributions to the understanding of altered states of consciousness.
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All the manuscripts submitted to this project will be peer-reviewed and need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here).
Keywords: Psychoactive natural products, Brain diseases, New molecules, New therapies, Drug delivery
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.