'Psychedelics & their therapeutic mechanisms'
Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, director of the
Abstract: The talk will take a multi-level approach to the question of how psychedelics can be therapeutically useful based on our recent research progress. Robin will discuss the pharmacology of classic serotonergic psychedelics, what this suggests to us about the function and evolutionary purpose of the serotonin 2A receptor, and the acute brain effects of psychedelics as determined by functional brain imaging. Robin will also discuss more general conceptual frameworks, including the entropic brain hypothesis, the current evidence base for psychedelic therapy, a new hierarchical predictive processing model of the action of psychedelics, and how this maps to the phenomenology of the acute psychedelic experience and therapeutic outcomes.
Bio: Robin Carhart-Harris heads up the Psychedelic Research Group within the Centre for Psychiatry at Imperial College London, where he has designed a number of functional brain imaging studies with psilocybin (magic mushrooms), LSD, MDMA (ecstasy) and DMT (ayahuasca), plus a clinical trial of psilocybin for treatment resistant depression. He has over 50 published papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals; two of which were ranked in the top 100 most impactful academic articles of 2016. Robin’s research has featured in major national and international media and he has given a popular TEDx talk.