Yale Program for Psychedelic Science

Psychedelic drugs and related molecules – psilocybin, MDMA, and the like – have profound effects on the mind and on the brain. They have been used in cultures around the world for millennia and have been studied by Western scientists and physicians for a century. Research into the effects of these substances was dramatically curtailed in the early 1970s by legal restrictions but has experienced a renaissance over the past two decades. Researchers and clinicians around the world are investigating their potential as therapeutic agents for a range of conditions, and what they can teach us about the brain and about the human mind.

Yale has a long history in this area, beginning with studies of LSD in the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, LSD was first found to act on serotonin receptors at Yale, in seminal studies by George Aghajanian and his colleagues in 1968. This tradition has been renewed over the past decade, and today Yale researchers are actively investigating and debating the neurobiological and psychological effects of psychedelics, their therapeutic potential, and their place in society.

The Yale Program for Psychedelic Science supports this multidisciplinary community of researchers.

The Yale Program for Psychedelic Science supports a dynamic community of researchers investigating the effects of psychedelic agents on the mind and brain, their therapeutic potential, and their place in society.

Our program spans several broad areas:

• Neuroscience – How do psychedelic drugs affect the brain, and what can they teach us about its normal organization and function?
• Psychology – How do psychedelic drugs affect the mind, and what can they tell us about its normal organization and function?
• Therapeutics – Can psychedelic drugs treat neurological and psychiatric disease? Who can they help? How should they be deployed? What are the risks?
• Society – What is the place of psychedelic drugs in society?
• Education – How can we best educate scientists, clinicians, and the general public about the complexities of psychedelic drug use? How can we train future leaders in this field?

We are committed to a transdisciplinary approach; we believe that by connecting scholars working across levels of analysis we can cultivate consilient understanding greater than the sum of its parts.

What is a psychedelic? The term ‘psychedelic’, from the Greek for ‘mind manifesting’, was coined by Henry Osmund in 1957. The classical psychedelics are drugs like LSD and psilocybin that act at the serotonin 2A receptors and have striking effects on human consciousness. Some insist that the word ‘psychedlic’ be reserved for these molecules. Others use the term more broadly to include other categories of drugs with dramatic effects on human consciousness, such as MDMA, or even ketamine. At the Yale Program for Psychedelic Science we do not restrict ourselves to the classical psychedelics; we aim to advance understanding of the mind and brain and to investigate new strategies to treat illness.