Do rats recognize musical melodies like humans?

Study reveals that rats showed sensitivity to track harmonic and temporal patterns in music and such sensitivities might be shared across species.

Evening people show enhanced fear acquisition, which may increase the risk to develop anxiety

Researchers resorted to the classic Pavlovian paradigm of fear conditioning to study the association between chronotype and fear responses in healthy humans.

Newborn hearing analysis can predict neurophysiological development at 12 months

Study shows an association between auditory processing and developmental outcomes in infants, crucial for the early detection of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Prof. Peter Fenwick

The BIAL Foundation expresses profound sorrow on the passing of Prof Peter Fenwick, a unique figure in parapsychology worldwide, broadly awarded for his work on the process of death, including consciousness and near-death experiences.

Can psychedelics enhance meditative training?

While the therapeutic evidence for meditation and psychedelics has been established as standalone interventions, recent research has started to point potential synergies in combining them. The research team led by Milan Scheidegger conducted a randomized placebo-controlled study aiming to test whether N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), an active ingredient of ayahuasca, and harmine (DMT-harmine) combined with meditation increases (1) mindfulness, (2) compassion, (3) insight, and (4) mystical-type transcendence to a larger degree than meditation with a placebo during a 3-day mindfulness retreat. Findings showed that mindfulness and compassion were not significantly different in the DMT-harmine group compared to placebo. However, the DMT-harmine group self-attributed greater levels of mystical-type experiences, non-dual awareness, and emotional breakthrough during the acute substance effects compared to meditation with a placebo. It seems that DMT-harmine may support meditation and meditation-related well-being through eliciting experiences of insight, transcendence, and meaning rather than through mindfulness or compassion. This study was supported by the BIAL Foundation, in the scope of the research project 333/20 - Mindfulness and psychedelics: A neurophenomenological approach to the characterization of acute and sustained response to DMT in experienced meditators, and published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, in the article Meditating on psychedelics. A randomized placebo-controlled study of DMT and harmine in a mindfulness retreat.

Maria de Sousa Award 2024 was delivered at the BIAL Foundation's 30th-anniversary celebration

Young researchers were awarded for their work on stem cells, stroke, ageing, fungal respiratory disease, and inflammatory bowel disease.