Dr. Gül Dölen on Rethinking Psychedelics, New Applications (Autism, Stroke, and Allergies), The Neurobiology of Beginner’s Mind, Octopuses on MDMA, and The Master Key of Metaplasticity (#667)

“Psychedelics have this property, which William James pointed out over 100 years ago, of creating this sense of what he called the noetic property, this feeling that ‘Now that I’ve had this experience, I know the really real. The true truth has been revealed to me, and everything before this moment was just a facade or some lesser truth or some limited access to the truth. But now I really know.’ For a scientist, that’s pretty dangerous.”
— Dr. Gül Dölen

Dr. Gül Dölen is an associate professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a pioneer and world leader of psychedelics research. Her laboratory has discovered a novel mechanism that could account for the broad range of therapeutic applications that psychedelics are currently being tested for. Her lab has discovered a novel critical period for social reward learning and shown that this critical period can be reopened with psychedelic drugs, such as MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, and ibogaine. Building on this discovery, she has formulated the hypothesis that psychedelics may be the long sought “master key” for unlocking critical periods across the brain. To test this hypothesis, she has initiated a nationwide, collaborative effort to determine whether psychedelics reopen critical periods for ocular dominance plasticity, bird song learning, anatomical plasticity in the barrel cortex, serotonergic neuronal regeneration, dendritic spinogenesis, and motor learning.

Importantly, understanding psychedelics through this framework dramatically expands the scope of disorders (including autism, stroke, and allergies) that might benefit from adjunct therapy with psychedelics, an approach she has dubbed the PHATHOM project (Psychedelic Healing: Adjunct Therapy Harnessing Opened Malleability).

Dr. Dölen earned her MD, PhD at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she carried out seminal work on critical periods, learning and memory, and the pathogenesis of autism.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube here. The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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#667: Dr. Gül Dölen on Rethinking Psychedelics, New Applications (Autism, Stroke, and Allergies), The Neurobiology of Beginner’s Mind, Octopuses on MDMA, and The Master Key of Metaplasticity

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Want to hear an episode with someone else who’s pushing us toward a greater understanding of how psychedelics can be used to heal us? Listen to my conversation with Dr. Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, in which we discussed how ketamine differs from other psychedelics, obstacles to getting ketamine labeled as an antidepressant, the difficulty of applying placebo controls to psychedelic research, avoiding another 50 years of psychedelic research darkness, where aspiring psychedelic researchers should focus their education, and much more.

#619: Dr. Suresh Muthukumaraswamy — LSD Microdosing, Classical Psychedelics vs. Ketamine, Science and Speed in New Zealand, Placebo Options, and The Infinite Possibilities of Studying Mind-Altering Compounds

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

SHOW NOTES

[06:25] How Gül designed her own major as an undergrad.
[09:03] Philosophy of mind and theory of mind.
[13:33] What theory of mind in non-human species suggests.
[16:45] The origin of Gül’s interest in autism.
[21:37] Autism facts vs. fiction.
[28:31] Critical periods.
[37:59] How critical periods apply to therapies for autism.
[43:37] Why might psychedelics allow us to reopen shut critical periods?
[49:25] MDMA and the octopus.
[52:40] Challenging popular notions about psychedelic research.
[54:52] Plasticity.
[1:00:26] Favorite neurotransmitter receptors.
[1:06:03] Can psychedelics cure allergies?
[1:14:00] Seeking a common pathway for the therapeutic effects of psychedelics.
[1:15:54] Potential applications for kappa-opioid agonists.
[1:17:02] Beta-arrestin developments.
[1:20:40] On Sasha Shulgin.
[1:26:19] Strokes.
[1:29:56] Cross-cultural considerations.
[1:33:26] What do these therapies look like 10 years from now?
[1:36:52] Gauging minimum effective dose.
[1:42:58] The funding frustrations that almost made Gül give up science.
[1:48:44] Taking risks.
[1:52:59] What would Gül change about the way research is funded today?
[1:55:57] Books most gifted.
[1:59:10] Parting thoughts.

MORE DR. GÜL DÖLEN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“I worked with my professors in philosophy in neuroscience primarily to come up with a curriculum that would span all of the different elements that I wanted to incorporate in trying to ask the question, ‘What is the mind? What is consciousness? How do we know that from different perspectives?’ And so the major was called Comparative Perspectives on the Mind, and it was a combination of neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, art, and religion.”

— Dr. Gül Dölen

“The first day I saw the photograph of the molecule of LSD sitting right next to the molecule of serotonin and the similarities between them, I was like, ‘This is it. This is how we’re going to crack it. This is how we’re going to get at those hard questions of neuroscience because here are chemicals that can alter our entire sense of reality, consciousness, perception, time, self, space, everything.’ And I am not alone. I think most neuroscientists who have tried psychedelics would have exactly the same response.”

— Dr. Gül Dölen

“Psychedelics have this property, which William James pointed out over 100 years ago, of creating this sense of what he called the noetic property, this feeling that ‘Now that I’ve had this experience, I know the really real. The true truth has been revealed to me and everything before this moment was just a facade or some lesser truth or some limited access to the truth. But now I really know.’ For a scientist, that’s pretty dangerous.”

— Dr. Gül Dölen

“I think there was an intuition a few years ago that, well, indigenous people have been using psychedelics forever. We don’t really need to understand their mechanisms, we don’t really need to dig into how it is these things work because we know they’re going to work because they’ve got this long history behind them. But I think that if this ends up being true—that this mechanistic explanation can really open up whole new avenues that people hadn’t been thinking of before—then I think that that’s a testament to the importance of always keep an open mind, always look for more answers, more questions, and keep searching.”

— Dr. Gül Dölen

“If we’re right and the critical period reopening explanation is this shift in the framework for how we understand these therapeutic effects, then in 10 years from now, the way that psychedelics are going to be used is going to be trying to identify that right context for the right disease. So while an inter-directed trip with a lot of psychotherapy makes a lot of sense for PTSD and addiction and depression, it’s probably the wrong context for stroke.”

— Dr. Gül Dölen

“I don’t think I’m unique for wanting to just see what happens when you give octopuses MDMA. In fact, I think the reason that everybody responded to that paper so well worldwide is because every single one of us has that curiosity, has that, ‘I wonder what would happen?’ It resonated with people, and I just think it mostly gets beaten out of us because of funding constraints.”

— Dr. Gül Dölen

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Joshua

2 years ago

Hi Tim. Thanks for this episode!
Have you ever explored what psychedelic research and renaissance means for the Black diaspora? I work with a journalist, Tonya Mosley, digging into this research and thought you’d be interested. Tonya is actually one of the 2023 Ferris UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellows. Excited to share more with you.

Jeff Gold

This was mind blowing but some of the science was absolutely impenetrable to this non-neuroscientist. Tim, if you think this deep in the weeds science is essential to include, perhaps there’s a way to do a “not for scientists“ edit or transcript. This happens occasionally with your Podcasts, and I just tune out for as long as the hard science for scientists parts last.

Lara Cardona-Morisset

More of her! Amazing episode. I love when you get cool chicks talking science, bonus points for psychedelic research. Loved her, want to be her, fabulous guest. Thanks from one of your +40 female fans.