The Stanford Psychedelic Science Symposium ended with a panel with all speakers and Alan Schatzberg and from some dinner conversations with the presenters and Rob Malenka, Deputy Director of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute (seen here):
• One researcher is looking at an MDMA-analog for autism spectrum disorder.
• What about research with teens, given the rise of suicides (now a top 10 cause of death in the U.S. for the first time)? One natural experiment: a study of Amazonians who were exposed to ayahuasca at age 12 as a rite of passage versus Amazonians who have not; they found no cognitive function difference. Not much research here, but obviously, there have been many decades of teen usage of various psychedelics in the wild.
• Interesting side speculation: not only are the SSRIs a poor treatment (if all of the data from all of the studies, including unpublished failed studies are included)… they may *cause* treatment-resistant depression.
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