Translating psychedelics: how neuroimaging studies led to a revolution in clinical practice

Speaker: David Nutt, Imperial College London
Series: Zangwill Club

The last decade has seen a remarkable resurgence of interest in serotonergic psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin (from magic mushrooms), LSD and DMT (dimethyl tryptamine – the active ingredient of ayahuasca). This has been driven by human imaging studies that reveal this action leads to profound alterations in brain measures of activity particularly in terms of increased entropy of EEG MEG and fMRI signals and reduced within-network, but increased between-network, connectivity. These findings not only explain the subjective nature of the psychedelic experience but also have implications for the treatment of psychiatric disorders such as depression, addiction, anorexia and OCD. Moreover serotonergic psychedelics all can increase synaptic growth and brain plasticity which has potential for the treatment of and neurological disorders such as stroke and traumatic brain injury. My talk will explore these brain mechanisms and clinical data to argue psychedelic medicine has a major place in the future of neuropsychopharmacology.

Host: Prof Jeff Dalley

This talk may be recorded and uploaded to the Zangwill Club Youtube channel in due course.