Can a single dose of psilocybin improve cognitive control in functional dissociative seizures?

Dissociative symptoms can occur in prevalent psychiatric illnesses, and they are particularly frequent in Functional Neurological Disorders which belong to Dissociative Disorders in international classifications. Although the pathophysiology of these disorders remains partially unknown, it has been related to the impairment of cognitive control abilities. Evidence suggest that psilocybin is likely to enhance cognitive control, but no clinical trial has evaluated the value of psilocybin in Dissociative Disorders. We believe that functional/dissociative seizures (previously named psychogenic non-epileptic seizures) constitute a good model for studying the effect of therapeutic interventions on dissociative phenomena. To investigate the effect of psilocybin on cerebral networks, we propose to focus on the circuits associated with cognitive control and their interactions with the processing of emotional information by quantifying changes in the activity of the cognitive control network assessed with functional brain MRI during an emotional Go-No Go task.

cognitive control; dissociative disorders; functional neurological disorders; magnetic resonance imaging; psilocybin; psychogenic non-epileptic seizures

Can a single dose of psilocybin improve cognitive control in functional dissociative seizures? Articles