Increased spontaneous MEG signal diversity for psychoactive doses of ketamine, LSD and psilocybin

What is the level of consciousness of the psychedelic state? Empirically, measures of neural signal diversity such as entropy and Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity score higher for wakeful rest than for states with lower conscious level like propofol-induced anesthesia. Here we compute these measures for spontaneous magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals from humans during altered states of consciousness induced by three psychedelic substances: psilocybin, ketamine and LSD. For all three, we find reliably higher spontaneous signal diversity, even when controlling for spectral changes. This increase is most pronounced for the single-channel LZ complexity measure, and hence for temporal, as opposed to spatial, signal diversity. We also uncover selective correlations between changes in signal diversity and phenomenological reports of the intensity of psychedelic experience. This is the first time that these measures have been applied to the psychedelic state and, crucially, that they have yielded values exceeding those of normal waking consciousness. These findings suggest that the sustained occurrence of psychedelic phenomenology constitutes an elevated level of consciousness - as measured by neural signal diversity

COVID-19 through Adverse Outcome Pathways: Building networks to better understand the disease - 3rd CIAO AOP Design Workshop

ALTEX - Alternatives to Animal ExperimentationCopyright © 2022 the author(s). On April 28-29, 2021, 50 scientists from different fields of expertise met for the 3rd online CIAO workshop. The CIAO project “Modelling the Pathogenesis of COVID-19 using the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework” aims at building a holistic assembly of the available scientific knowledge on COVID-19 using the AOP framework. An individual AOP depicts the disease progression from the initial contact with the SARS-CoV-2 virus through biological key events (KE) toward an adverse outcome such as respiratory distress, anosmia or multiorgan failure. Assembling the individual AOPs into a network highlights shared KEs as central biological nodes involved in multiple outcomes observed in COVID-19 patients. During the workshop, the KEs and AOPs established so far by the CIAO members were presented and posi­tioned on a timeline of the disease course. Modulating factors influencing the progression and severity of the disease were also addressed as well as factors beyond purely biological phenomena. CIAO relies on an interdisciplinary crowd­sourcing effort, therefore, approaches to expand the CIAO network by widening the crowd and reaching stakeholders were also discussed. To conclude the workshop, it was decided that the AOPs/KEs will be further consolidated, inte­grating virus variants and long COVID when relevant, while an outreach campaign will be launched to broaden the CIAO scientific crowd.The CIAO project is steered by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (EC-JRC), the Humane Society International (HSI), and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). For Jorid Birkelund Sørli, the research is supported by FIKA, Focused Research Effort on Chemicals in the Working Environment from the Danish Government. For Daniel Jacobson, this work was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC for the US Department of Energy (LOIS:10074) and the National Institutes of Health 3RF1AG053303-01S2

Notes for genera: basal clades of Fungi (including Aphelidiomycota, Basidiobolomycota, Blastocladiomycota, Calcarisporiellomycota, Caulochytriomycota, Chytridiomycota, Entomophthoromycota, Glomeromycota, Kickxellomycota, Monoblepharomycota, Mortierellomycota, Mucoromycota, Neocallimastigomycota, Olpidiomycota, Rozellomycota and Zoopagomycota)

Compared to the higher fungi (Dikarya), taxonomic and evolutionary studies on the basal clades of fungi are fewer in number. Thus, the generic boundaries and higher ranks in the basal clades of fungi are poorly known. Recent DNA based taxonomic studies have provided reliable and accurate information. It is therefore necessary to compile all available information since basal clades genera lack updated checklists or outlines. Recently, Tedersoo et al. (MycoKeys 13:1--20, 2016) accepted Aphelidiomycota and Rozellomycota in Fungal clade. Thus, we regard both these phyla as members in Kingdom Fungi. We accept 16 phyla in basal clades viz. Aphelidiomycota, Basidiobolomycota, Blastocladiomycota, Calcarisporiellomycota, Caulochytriomycota, Chytridiomycota, Entomophthoromycota, Glomeromycota, Kickxellomycota, Monoblepharomycota, Mortierellomycota, Mucoromycota, Neocallimastigomycota, Olpidiomycota, Rozellomycota and Zoopagomycota. Thus, 611 genera in 153 families, 43 orders and 18 classes are provided with details of classification, synonyms, life modes, distribution, recent literature and genomic data. Moreover, Catenariaceae Couch is proposed to be conserved, Cladochytriales Mozl.-Standr. is emended and the family Nephridiophagaceae is introduced

Novel order patterns recurrence plot-based quantification measures to unveil deterministic dynamics from stochastic processes

Forbidden ordinal patterns are known to be useful to discriminate between chaotic and stochastic systems. However, while uncorrelated noise can be separated from deterministic signals using forbidden ordinal patterns, correlated noise exhibits apparently forbidden ordinal patterns, which can impede distinguishing noise from chaos. Here, we introduce order patterns recurrence plots to visualise the difference among deterministic chaotic systems, and stochastic systems of uncorrelated and correlated noise. In an order pattern plot of a chaotic system with an optimal embedding dimension, the diagonal lines remain preserved, while uncorrelated noise shows up as thinly isolated dots and correlated noise forms clusters. We propose two measures, the mean and the median of relative frequencies of order patterns that appear in a time series to distinguish those dynamics. The effectiveness of the two measures is analysed using bifurcation diagrams of the logistic map, the tent map, the delayed logistic map and the Hénon map. Our results show, that both, the mean and the median, distinguish chaos from quasiperiodicity in the delayed logistic map. The mean of relative frequencies of order pattern is reciprocal to the number of order patterns that occur in a given time series and thus can be a measure of forbidden structures—which becomes unbounded. While the mean is robust to the change of parameters in the bifurcation diagrams, the median exhibits sensitive changes, which is significant to characterise chaotic signals