AbstractAssessing the effects of psychedelics in naturalistic settings is essential for advancing their therapeutic potential and informing public health strategies. However, existing studies often encounter methodological challenges that can impact the validity and applicability of their results. This talk will address several key issues in the field, including the importance of utilizing sufficiently large and diverse samples that reflect a range of socio-demographic backgrounds and brain health statuses. It will discuss the benefits of employing data-driven clustering methods over examining individual drug effects and the necessity of unbiased participant recruitment strategies, such as avoiding selection from highly motivated groups and not disclosing study hypotheses prematurely. Additionally, the presentation will emphasize the need for robust control populations and comprehensive data collection that includes detailed histories of drug use beyond psychedelics, as well as lifestyle factors like alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine consumption and other health-related behaviors. The application of appropriate statistical methodologies will also be highlighted as critical for accurate analysis.
To illustrate these considerations, the talk will present findings from a large-scale study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period marked by significant mental health challenges. This study implemented several of the recommended methodological improvements, resulting in outcomes that diverged from much of the existing literature. Notably, while within-subject analyses indicated that psychedelic use was associated with improvements in mental health, group-level comparisons revealed that psychedelic users did not outperform drug-naïve individuals, who generally maintained better mental health outcomes. These findings provide valuable insights into the contextual factors influencing psychedelic effects and underscore the importance of rigorous research designs in this area. |
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Speaker
Maria Balaet is a Research Associate in the Department of Neuroimaging at King's College London. She holds a PhD in Clinical Medicine and Computational Neuroscience from Imperial College London, for which she was funded by a prestigious award from the UK Medical Research Council. Her work focuses on human intelligence and how this is modulated by recreational drug use as well as by neurological or psychiatric conditions. Most notably, for the past 4 years she led the drug use arm of the Great British Intelligence Test, a comprehensive super-scale study of human intelligence which recruited >500k individuals and monitored ~135k longitudinally. The aim of this study arm was to investigate, at scale, the effects of recreational drugs including psychedelics on the brain and behaviour in a study-purpose agnostic sample. She is also one of UK's key science communicators on the topic of psychedelics, having delivered 50 public lectures in the past year alone.