PSYCHEDELIC SCIENCE & THERAPY
A WEBINAR SERIES BROUGHT TO YOU BY ICPR
Dear ICPR friends,
Since postponing ICPR 2020 to September, and staying at home for the better part of our lives, we started feeling a little itchy. We imagined you might too. That’s why we’re excited to announce two panel-style webinars on 15 & 16 May.
Both webinars are free for ICPR 2020 ticket-holders. You should have received an email with the registration link for access to both webinars.
For others, access is available at a fee of 12.50€ for one webinar, 20€ for both.
WEBINAR 1
THE THERAPEUTIC MECHANISMS OF PSYCHEDELICS
Friday 15th May
8pm (Amsterdam) | 7pm (London) | 2pm (New York/Buenos Aires) | 11am (California)
Duration: 90 minutes
Matt Johnson, Fernanda Palhano, Ros Watts and Alex Belser will discuss our current understanding of the therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics. These international experts have a large body of evidence available to them: from clinical observations during therapy sessions, insights from patient interviews, to research findings from cognitive, pharmacological and neuroimaging studies.
This webinar will feature short presentations from each speaker, followed by a discussion moderated by Joost Breeksema, ending with interaction with you, the audience.
Matt Johnson is a professor at Johns Hopkins, and an expert on psychedelics, other drugs, and addiction. He has conducted research with psychedelics for over 15 years, and in 2008 provided the frequently cited psychedelic risk and safety guidelines, helping resurrect human psychedelic research. He also published the first research on psychedelic treatment of tobacco addiction and the largest study of psilocybin in treating cancer-related distress.
Fernanda Palhano Xavier de Fontes is an electrical engineer who earned a master’s and a PhD in neurosciences at the Brain Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. She has investigated the acute effects of ayahuasca with fMRI and its therapeutic potential in patients with treatment-resistant depression. Her main areas of interest are psychedelics, psychiatry and imaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG.
Ros Watts is a clinical psychologist and the clinical leader of the Psilocybin for Depression study at Imperial College London. She designed the therapy protocol for Psilodep 2, and works as a lead ‘guide’ alongside three other therapists. Her qualitative research explored the patients’ perspectives, giving rise to the importance of connectedness in psychedelic treatments.
Alex Belser, PhD, is a licensed psychologist based at Yale and New York University. He is a study therapist in a trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for severe PTSD and co-investigator of studies investigating psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder and major depression. He has also conducted qualitative research on participant’s experiences during a trial into psilocybin-assisted therapy for end-of-life anxiety.
WEBINAR 2
HOW CAN WE STUDY ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS?
Saturday 16th May
4pm (Amsterdam) | 3pm (London) | 11am (New York/Buenos Aires) | 7am (California)
Duration: 90 minutes
This webinar is dedicated to the memory of ALIUS founder Martin Fortier-Davy and features Chris Timmermann, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Katrin Preller, and Raphaël Millière. Each of these researchers use their own set of innovative methods to study the diversity of consciousness. Whether it’s through amassing and analyzing big data sets, scanning the brains of volunteers who are given psychedelics intravenously in laboratory settings, or using specialized interview techniques such as microphenomenology, these researchers all try to capture what it’s like to be in an altered state of consciousness. We will be looking at how this can help us to understand the nature of consciousness, and how we can use this knowledge to improve mental health.
This webinar is organized in collaboration with ALIUS and is moderated by Michiel van Elk.
Chris Timmermann is a Chilean researcher based at Imperial College’s Psychedelic Research Group, where he heads a project using neuroimaging techniques to study the effects of DMT in the human brain, while also exploring their application for mental health conditions.
Enzo Tagliazucchi is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina where he leads an interdisciplinary effort to study consciousness and its relation with culture using physics, computer science, biochemistry, psychology, engineering and ethnobotany. Their field studies of the neural and psychological effects of DMT are the first experiments with psychedelics conducted in Argentina, and Enzo hopes to create a Latin American Institute for the study of natural psychedelic molecules consumed in natural environments.
Katrin Preller is a neuroscientist based at the University of Zurich, where she uses a variety of brain imaging techniques to investigate the effects of psychedelics on self-perception, social cognition, and multimodal processing. Her group’s research focuses on the neurobiology and pharmacology of cognitive and emotional processes in health and disease.
Raphaël Millière studies philosophy at Oxford, where he investigates self-consciousness by using different techniques to gather evidence from non-ordinary states of self-consciousness, such as those induced by psychedelics.
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