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Explore contemporary psychedelic research and its exciting possibilities for the future with UC Berkeley professors Gül Dölen, Daniela Kaufer, Michael Silver, and Noah Whiteman at a special online event hosted by BCSP Executive Director Imran Khan, on March 27, 1 pm PST.

Why did psychedelic compounds evolve? How do they produce such profound changes in behavior, physiology, perception, emotion, and social interactions? What enables them to have the potential to support healing and therapeutic advances?

The UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP) is bringing together leading researchers who are investigating these questions and many more.

Despite historical challenges, including extensive regulatory requirements and societal stigma, the tide is turning for psychedelic science. Years of suppression mean that the contemporary resurgence of psychedelics research is still in its infancy. While clinical trials in humans are showing promising results of psychedelic-assisted therapy for treating a variety of mental health disorders, relatively little is known about the neural mechanisms of the actions of psychedelics, why plants, fungi, and animals evolved to produce psychedelic substances, or how psychedelics can be deployed as research tools to better understand the brain and mind.

The 2023 UC Berkeley Psychedelics Survey revealed that 78 percent of a sample of U.S. voters support making it easier for researchers to study psychedelic substances. At this event, the BCSP presents leading scholars and their visions for the future of psychedelic research — and why such research is necessary and timely.

At this event, hosted by BCSP’s Executive Director Imran Khan, our speakers will introduce the core concepts of their research and their hopes for the future of psychedelic science:

Professor Gül Dölen holds the Renee & U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Bob Parsons Endowed Chair in psychology, psychedelics, and neuroscience. Dr. Dölen joined the UC Berkeley faculty in January 2024, where she continues her groundbreaking work on the brain mechanisms underlying the therapeutic potential of MDMA and other drugs. Research in the Dölen laboratory on how psychedelics influence “critical periods” of neural plasticity and learning has substantial implications for the future development of psychedelic-assisted therapies. https://www.dolenlab.org/

Imran Khan is executive director of BCSP. He works closely with the faculty on strategy and manages the BCSP team. Prior to joining BCSP, Imran served as CEO of the British Science Association and as head of public engagement for Wellcome, the world’s third-largest philanthropic foundation. He has a BA in biology from the University of Oxford, a MSc in science communication from Imperial College London, and a MBA from Bayes Business School. Imran lives on a floating home and spends his free time trail running, rock climbing, gaming, enjoying science fiction, and trying to make the perfect daal.

Professor Daniela Kaufer is a faculty member in Integrative Biology and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, and she is the associate dean of biological sciences at UC Berkeley. Kaufer explores stress and resilience in the human brain and animal models. She investigates how psychedelics could alleviate stress-related disorders, aiming to unravel the intricate interactions between stress and the brain’s neurobiology. www.kauferlab.com

Professor Michael Silver is in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry & Vision Science, and he also serves as the faculty director of the BCSP. Silver is overseeing UC Berkeley’s inaugural human subjects research studies on psilocybin, investigating both the immediate and enduring impacts of psychedelics on human visual perception and cognition and their neural substrates. He and his team endeavor to deepen our understanding of how the human brain constructs representations of the environment and how these representations are influenced by cognitive processes such as attention, expectation, and learning. https://argentum.ucbso.berkeley.edu/

Professor Noah Whiteman is in the departments of Integrative Biology and Molecular and Cell Biology. Work in the Whiteman laboratory explores the intricate evolutionary relationships among plants, fungi, and animals and seeks to answer why and how psychedelics came to be. Whiteman’s research sheds light on the evolutionary forces that led to the emergence of psychoactive compounds in nature, providing fascinating insights into the natural history of these substances. https://whitemanlab.org/

Please join us as we look forward to the future of psychedelic research. 

Join the first event in the BCSP lecture series featuring Drs. Elliot Marseille and Jennifer Mitchell for a deep dive into health economics and psychedelics – on November 9, from 4.30 pm to 6.00 pm at UC Berkeley’s Li Ka Shing Center, Room 125.

Is it economically feasible for MDMA-assisted therapy to be offered widely to treat PTSD, or psilocybin-assisted therapy to similarly treat depression at scale? Can group therapy models make psychedelic therapy more cost-effective and more widely accessible? Is it possible to scale psychedelic-assisted therapy using the group model without compromising efficacy and/or patient safety? As clinical trials show the remarkable potential of psychedelic-assisted therapies, questions of economic viability and cost-effectiveness are more relevant than ever.

Join us for an introduction to the BCSP from the center director, Professor Michael Silver and this timely discussion by Elliot Marseille of Berkeley and UCSF’s Global Initiative for Psychedelic Science Economics (GIPSE) and Jennifer Mitchell of UCSF’s Institute for Translational Neuroscience, in conversation with BCSP executive director Imran Khan, including a live Q&A with our audience.

Speaker: Elliot Marseille, Founding Director of UC Berkeley’s Global Initiative for Psychedelic Science Economics, and Principal of the firm Health Strategies International, Global Initiative for Psychedelic Science Economics (GIPSE)

Speaker: Jennifer Mitchell, Professor, Neurology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences

Speaker: Michael Silver, Professor of optometry and vision science and neuroscience, and center director of the BCSP, Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry & Vision Science Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute

Moderator: Imran Khan, Executive director, UC Berkeley Center for the Science of PsychedelicsAdmission Information:

Pre-register for this event. 

Research into powerful psychedelic substances is gaining momentum, policy is changing rapidly, and public engagement with psychedelics and their potential benefits is greater than ever. 

But how should the public make sense of these complex, dynamic changes? For example, which substances are even classed as psychedelics? Where do psychedelic substances come from? How have they been used throughout history and how do they work in the brain? What are the contemporary debates on psychedelics today, in a field that asks questions of medicine, spirituality, Indigeneity, counter-culture, neuroscience, psychology, law, capitalism, and more? 

The BCSP has set out to address questions, and more, with free, comprehensive, and accessible public education on the fundamental science, history and culture of psychedelics. 

Watch this recording to join BCSP co-founder Michael Pollan, course instructor and UC Berkeley Professor David Presti, Johns Hopkins associate professor Gül Dölen, award-winning producer of our new course, Nicole Vinnola, and BCSP executive director Imran Khan, as they dig into the latest scientific research, journalism, and contemporary debates surrounding psychedelics.

The launch of Psychedelics and the Mind ensures that the global public will have access to free, culturally-informed, and evidence-based education that cuts through misinformation, stigma, and hype surrounding these powerful substances. Find out more about the course and enroll here.

More than six in ten (61%) American registered voters support legalizing regulated therapeutic access to psychedelics, including 35% who report “strong” support, the inaugural UC Berkeley Psychedelics Survey has found. 

Over half of voters (56%) polled support obtaining FDA approval for psychedelics by prescription. In addition, more than three-quarters of voters (78%) support making it easier for researchers to study psychedelic substances.

Almost half (49%) support removing criminal penalties for personal use and possession with support for spiritual and religious use polling at just over four out of ten (44%).

• View the UC Berkeley Psychedelics Survey Presentation Deck 
• Download the survey results document 
• Download the survey data crosstabs 
• Watch the recorded briefing with Michael Pollan

The majority of American voters support policy reforms for psychedelics, the survey revealed. The new national poll, launched by the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP) found that almost seven out of ten (69%) voters support at least two of the policy reforms tested. 

However, despite the high levels of support for policy changes, 61% of voters also said they do not perceive psychedelics as “good for society” and 69% do not perceive them as “something for people like me.” The data suggests voters are open to policy change but also have significant reservations.

Awareness and use of psychedelics are widespread and appear to predict voter sentiment. 47% of voters have heard something about psychedelics recently and over half (51%) reported a ‘first-degree’ connection to psychedelic use – that either they, or someone close to them, has used a psychedelic.

Respondents with awareness and a first-degree connection to psychedelics are also more likely to support policy reforms, have positive perceptions of psychedelics, and trust in almost all sources of psychedelics information (with the exception of law enforcement). With the exception of research expansion, no psychedelic policy reform is majority-supported by voters who have no first-degree connection to use.

The polling data also illustrated that awareness and first-degree connection to psychedelics are demographically uneven, with African-American and Latino communities most notably underrepresented. 

Additional key data from the survey includes:

• 47% of voters have heard something about psychedelics recently, with 48% of those saying that they have heard about psychedelics’ use for mental health treatments. 
• African Americans are the racial/ethnic group least likely to have heard something about psychedelics recently (29%) and also have a much lower first-degree connection to psychedelics use (26%) than other groups.
• Liberal voter support for legalized therapeutic access to psychedelics is 80%, compared to moderates at 66% and conservatives at 45%.
• Nearly half of voters (47%) who support therapeutic access to psychedelics also believe psychedelics are not “good for society”.
• The majority of voters are comfortable with psychedelic therapy being used to treat those suffering from terminal illnesses (80%), veterans (69%), and people suffering from treatment resistant depression and anxiety (67%). Notably fewer are comfortable with open access to psychedelic therapy for anyone over the age of 21 (44%), or the use of psychedelic therapy to treat addiction (45%). 
• While large majorities say they would trust information about psychedelics coming from nurses (75%), scientific researchers (74%), doctors (74%), and psychiatrists (70%), trust in the FDA as an information source is more split, with only 56% considering it “very” or “somewhat trustworthy,” 17% considering it “somewhat suspicious” and 22% considering it “very suspicious.” 

The polling results and insights from the UC Berkeley Psychedelics poll were presented at a dedicated briefing with Best-selling author of ‘How to Change Your Mind’ and BCSP Co-Founder Michael Pollan, BCSP Executive Director, Imran Khan, and, Project Lead, Taylor West. 

Watch the video briefing about the survey here.

“The UC Berkeley Psychedelics Survey provides information vital to understanding where the public stands on psychedelics right now. This is critical for anyone working in the psychedelic field,” Michael Pollan said. “Nuanced debate in media, policy reforms and public education programs will be most effective when informed by data-driven insights rather than assumption and conducted in thoughtful response to the hopes, fears, and perceptions held by different communities across the US.”

The poll is an important milestone for the BCSP’s public education program and for establishing longitudinal analysis of public opinion about psychedelics over time. “Amidst competing narratives of psychedelic stigma and hype, it’s vital that we have clear information about what the public really thinks and believes about psychedelics. Our data shows that people are hearing about the research, and support more science – but also that some communities are being left out of an important public conversation,” Imran Khan said.

“At the BCSP our mission is to support the burgeoning field of psychedelics with vital evidence and trustworthy data and the UC Berkeley Psychedelics Survey provides this much-needed information for policy, business, media and research now and in the future”, Khan concluded.

“This inaugural survey shows voters in the U.S. are open to significant changes in policy related to psychedelic access, even as they hold personal reservations about the role of those compounds in our society, “ said Taylor West. “That’s a nuance in public attitudes about psychedelics that anyone working in the field needs to pay attention to.”

View the UC Berkeley Psychedelics Survey Deck 

Download the survey results document 

Download the survey crosstabs 

The BCSP is grateful to Blake Mycoskie for his philanthropic support of this first edition of the UC Berkeley Psychedelics Survey. The Center is now looking for support for future iterations of the project, including so we can start to identify trends in multi-year data; please get in touch if you’re able to support this important quantitative work.