Monday, August 21, 2023

Time For Something A Little Different -- Brain Research -- August 21, 2023

Locator: 45436RESEARCH. 

From Wired, September, 2023
Gül Dölen

Research.

  • critical periods of brain development
    • multiple critical periods
      • walking, seeing, hearing
      • bonding with parents, developing absolute pitch
      • assimilating into a culture
  • is there a "master key" or opening (or re-opening "lost") critical periods?
  • spoiler alert: psychedelic drugs (previously discussed on the blog)
  • enter, stage right: Gül Dölen (I assume pronounced Jill Dylan)
    • neuroscientist, Baltimore, MD
    • grew up in San Antonio, TX
    • began with a beach vacation, Antalya, Turkey -- eight years old
    • in college: Brain and Behavior
    • psychedelics hijack the machinery used by molecules that occur naturally in the brain
    • noted strikingly similar molecular structures between the neurotransmitter serotonin and LSD
  • enrolled in a dual MD/PhD program at Brown University and MIT
    • joined a lab that studied learning and memory during "critical periods"
    • her focus focused on fragile X syndrome; autism
    • oxytocin + serotonin = love
    • area in the brain: the nucleur accumbens
  • started her own lab at Johns Hopkins, 2014
    • that's when she went down the psychedelic rabbit hole
    • octopus studies; MDMA mimics serotonin; changed the behavior of octopi -- landmark study
    • partner: French neuroscientist, Romain Nardou
  • Dölen discovers a "critical period" -- publication-worthy on its own
    • first drug tried on mice: cocaine
    • then MDMA; results similar to oxytocin
  • 2019: published those results; thought that this was all done, then decided to try LSD
  • that's when things really got weird
    • switch to drug pioneers Alexander and Ann Shulgin and the lab off Ted Sawyer
    • LSD worked as well as MDMA for re-opening critical periods 
  • also worked with
    • ketamine (a dissociative; anesthetic)
    • psilocybin (aka magic mushrooms)
    • ibogaine (a psychedelic derived rom an African plant)
    • cocaine did not work
  • 2021: Austria; inadvertently discovered; ketamine re-opens a vision-related critical period 
  • Dölen felt something must "connect" all the psychedelics
    • and that connection? Genetic.
    • her lab has pinpointed 65 genes that seem to be involved in the process
  • current study: critical period to re-open what is lost during a stroke

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