Stanford Regulating Circuits of the Brain Study - MDMA

Participants will be instructed to stare at a white cross on a black background. During this time, their eyes will be monitored using an eye-tracker by the study coordinator to ensure that the participant is not asleep. Four separate 5-min runs of resting state data will be acquired, two with a posterior-anterior phase encoding direction and the other two with a posterior-anterior direction.

Participants watch the screen and see a cue in the form of a circle or square, either of which can be empty or dashed, wait a delay of a varied amount of time, and then seen the target (a white triangle), which they are instructed to respond to with a button press as quickly as possible. The participant is instructed to attempt to press a button while the target is on the screen to either win money or avoid losing money. A feedback slide is presented after each trial to inform the participant whether they were successful on that trial, and the resulting gain or loss of money.

'Go' trials (the word "press" in GREEN) require participants to respond as quickly as possible, while the 'NoGo' trials ("press" in RED) require participants to withhold responses.

Accuracy data are quantified as number of errors and lower values indicate better performance. The results across all the individual tests are aggregated to a single report that details function as compared to a normative database.

Responses are quantified on a 4-point scale and summed for total DASS score and for each Depression, Anxiety and Subscale score. Higher scores indicate more severe symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress.

Responses are quantified as a summed score from 0 to 23 and determine the degree to which a person perceives an outcome as being contingent on their own actions or those of external forces. Higher scores indicate greater levels of external locus of control.

Responses are quantified on a 5-point Likert scale and is a measure of emotional self-regulation. Scores measure three core domains: negativity bias, emotional resilience, and social skills. Higher scores indicate higher functioning and better coping.

Responses are quantified on a 4-point scale and measures anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. Scores measure domains of social interaction, food and drink, sensory experience, and interest/pastimes. An "abnormal" score is defined as 3 or more.

Responses are quantified on a 4-point scale and measure demotivation in three domains: executive apathy, emotional apathy, and initiation apathy. Higher scores indicate higher apathy level.

Responses are quantified on a 5-point Likert scale and assesses an individual's motivation and pleasure. Total scores range from 0-72 and higher scores indicate greater motivation and pleasure during everyday activities.

Responses are summed on a 5-point scale. Scores assess interest, motivation, effort, and consummatory pleasure across four domains: hobbies, food/drink, social activities, and sensory experiences. Lower scores represent a higher level of anhedonia.

Responses are recorded on a sliding scale with one side reading 'No, not more than usually' and the opposite reading 'Yes, much more than usually'. More agreeance to the statements represents that the individual is experiencing higher levels of altered states of consciousness.

Responses are averaged on a 7-point Likert scale in relation to the six subscales. Scores assess individual difference in the value of different social rewards. The six subscales of social reward that the questionnaire measures are admiration, negative social potency, passivity, prosocial interactions, sexual reward, and sociability.

Responses are recorded on a computer-based program. This task utilizes photographic stimuli for measuring both cognitive and emotional empathy.

Responses will be quantified by intervals of 10 on a scale of 1 to 100.

Responses are summed on a 5-point scale in rating one's agreeance to the dissociative statements as 'not at all' to 'extreme'. Scores assess individual's dissociative state. A higher score represents more dissociation.

Responses are summed on a 7-point scale in rating one's severity to the statements as 'not assessed' to 'extremely severe'. Scores assess psychiatric symptoms like anxiety, depression, and psychoses. A higher score means the individual is presenting more extreme symptoms.

Participants rate acceptance-related experiences and avoidance-related experiences using a visual analog scale from 0-100, with 0 indicating "No, not at all" and 100 indicating "Yes, extremely or absolutely".

Survey created for the study where participants are asked to rate the stimulus presented during the MID task on a scale from -5 to 5, with -5 indicating that they disliked it very much, 0 indicating a neutral rating, and 5 indicating that they liked it very much.

Survey created for the study where participants are asked to rate the faces presented during the FEET task on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 represents the most negative reaction, 50 represents a neutral reaction, and 100 represents the most positive reaction to the face.

At 6 different time points throughout drug administration visits the participant chews on a cotton swab for 30 seconds to collect saliva. A steroid hormone assay is conducted to collect data on cortisol, testosterone, progesterone, and estradiol levels.

Subjects will be prompted to report their drug experience throughout the drug visit.