Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Mini Series part 3:
Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy - History, Basic Science, Neurophysiology, Clinical Applications, and the Overlap With Spirituality, Meditation, and Transcendence
Dr. Charles Grob, MD | Dr. David Presti, Ph.D. | Dr. Rael Cahn, MD, PhD
Thursday, April 20th, 12 - 2 pm PST
CME Credits: 2 Credits
This two-hour presentation will explore psilocybin-assisted therapy's growing scientific terrain and integral nature. Each speaker will present for approximately 30 minutes with dedicated moderation to allow for an integrated community discussion, including questions and answers for the speakers.
Dr. Presti will start the panel presentation by covering the history and mycology of psychedelic mushrooms, their entry into contemporary society, the chemistry and neurobiology of psilocybin and psilocin, and wrap things up by briefly tying together psychedelics, contemplative practice, and the nature of mind and reality.
Dr. Cahn will follow, giving an overview of the neurophysiological and neural circuit changes evoked by psilocybin and related tryptamine psychedelics. He will then transition to an overview of his studies with psilocybin and mindfulness practice in healthy normal volunteers investigating the changes in sensory and cognitive processing of visual stimuli in a placebo controlled study aimed at exploring which aspects of psilocybin-induced altered stimulus-induced brain processing are most centrally related to the subjective experience of oceanic boundlessness, ego dissolution and mystical union.
Dr. Grob will wrap up the panel presentations, summarizing the clinical evidence for psychedelic assisted therapy and the related paradigm shift in the field of mental health currently underway. He will also address the challenges and advancements in the application of psychedelic research, including sharing his experience facilitating psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions and foresight into what essential elements have shown promise for optimized clinical outcomes.
Meet the Panelists:
Dr. Charles Grob, MD
Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, UCLA School of Medicine
Charles S. Grob, M.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and the Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He previously held faculty positions at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of California at Irvine. He has conducted approved clinical research with psychedelics since the early 1990s. From 2004-2008 he was the Principal Investigator of the first study in several decades to examine the use of a psilocybin treatment model for patients with advanced-cancer anxiety. He has also conducted research into the range of effects of MDMA in both normal volunteers and in a selected subject population of adult autistics with severe social anxiety. He has conducted a series of ayahuasca research studies in Brazil. Over the last thirty years, Dr. Grob has published numerous articles and chapters on psychedelics in the medical and psychiatric literature and he is the editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader (Putnam/Tarcher, 2002), co-editor (with Roger Walsh) of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics (SUNY Press, 2005) and co-editor (with James Grigsby) of the recently published Handbook of Medical Hallucinogens (Guilford Press, 2021). He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute.
Dr. David Presti, Ph.D.
Teaching Professor of Neurobiology and Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
David E. Presti teaches biology, psychology, and cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been on the molecular and cell biology faculty for more than 30 years. For over a decade, he worked in treating addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco. And for the past 20 years, he has been teaching neuroscience and conversing about science with Tibetan Buddhist monastics in India, Bhutan, and Nepal. He has doctorates in molecular biology and biophysics from Caltech and clinical psychology from the University of Oregon. He is the author of Foundational Concepts in Neuroscience: A Brain-Mind Odyssey (Norton, 2016) and Mind Beyond Brain: Buddhism, Science, and the Paranormal (Columbia, 2018).
Dr. Rael Cahn, MD, Ph.D.
Clinical Associate Professor, USC Dept of Psychiatry Director, USC Center for Mindfulness Science
Baruch Rael Cahn, MD, Ph.D., is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry with the USC Department of Psychiatry and directs the USC Center for Mindfulness Science and his lab at the USC Brain and Creativity Institute. Broadly, his lab is focused on neurophenomenology and integrative psychiatry. Current studies are focused on investigating the efficacy of meditative practices for personal development as well as psychological distress and the neurophysiologic changes underlying the clinical effectiveness of meditation and mindfulness for depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. One specific focus of his current meditation research regards the neural correlates to a) transformation of the experience of self and b) narrative-free awareness. He is also investigating the epigenetic basis of MDMA Assisted therapy for PTSD in collaboration with the MAPS Phase III trial of MDMA Assisted Therapy. He is now starting a study evaluating the clinical efficacy of a novel ketamine-assisted mindfulness training program for treatment-resistant depression at LAC+USC Medical Center. He is interested in developing and investigating psychedelic-assisted mindfulness training programs for depression, PTSD, anxiety, substance use disorders, and personal development.