No, it’s not going to plug you into the Matrix. But new tech, like this helmet from neuroscience startup Kernel that records brain activity in real-time, may help scientists develop better psychedelic treatments. This article appeared in the July/August 2021 issue ofA lot has changed since the 1990s. That’s when Alex Belser, then an undergrad at Georgetown University, first found a book about LSD psychotherapy.
Belser, who holds a doctorate in psychology, has made many contributions to this potential medical renaissance. He’s the founding president of Nautilus Sanctuary, a nonprofit dedicated to psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. He also currently works as chief clinical officer at Cybin Inc., a biotech company focused on psychedelic therapeutics, like using a sci-fi looking helmet that shows real-time blood flow, oxygen levels and other brain activity during a psychedelic experience.
Q: Interesting. That sounds a bit more like religion, or an existential belief system, than medicine. Q: And Oregon legalized psilocybin in the November 2020 election. In application, what does that mean immediately and in the near future? But there’s an important distinction from cannabis: Cannabis is sold, even if it’s prescribed, as a product without supervision or without working with a facilitator. Psychedelic medicines are a very different class because nobody is seriously proposing that people should just be prescribed psilocybin for at-home use as we do with cannabis —at least not at significant doses. This is really a combination treatment.
I tacked from there to working with LGBTQ+ people. My dissertation in psychology was on how to prevent suicide among lesbian, gay and bisexual teenagers. Because in that group, a lot of people feel like they want to end their lives in part because of the shame and stigma that they’ve received. We started a psychedelic research group at NYU in 2006, when I was just a graduate student. I got to help run a number of studies at NYU. I did my clinical research fellowship at Yale.