Fernanda Palhano Xavier de Fontes

Fernanda Palhano Xavier de Fontes is a research engineer at the Brain Institute, UFRN. Her main areas of interest are psychedelics, psychiatry, and neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and electroencephalography.

CV

Fernanda Palhano Xavier de Fontes is an electrical engineer with a double degree, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) and another from the École National Supérieure d’Electrotechnique, d’Electronique, d’Informatique (ENSEEIHT), Toulouse, France. She earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in neurosciences from the Brain Institute of UFRN. During her studies, she used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate the acute effect of ayahuasca and later investigated its therapeutic potential fpr patients with treatment-resistant depression.

She is a member of the ALIUS research network.

Notable Research Papers

• Rapid antidepressant effects of the psychedelic ayahuasca in treatment-resistant depression: a randomized placebo-controlled trial (Palhano-Fontes, et al., 2019)
• The psychedelic state induced by ayahuasca modulates the activity and connectivity of the default mode network (Palhano-Fontes, et al., 2015)
• Long-term use of psychedelic drugs is associated with differences in brain structure and personality in humans (Palhano-Fontes, et al., 2015)

Find more on Google Scholar or PubMed

In our database you will also find her as an author on many more papers.

Media

• New Findings From a Randomized Placebo Controlled Trial With Ayahuasca (AYA conference | ICEERS, 2019)
• Ayahuasca for Treatment-Resistant Depression: Insights From a Randomized Clinical Trial (Chacruna, 2019)