Reopening critical periods with psychedelics (and why we gave octopuses MDMA) with Dr Gul Dolen (USA)
With Dr Gül Dölen (USA)
Date: Wed 17 June 2026 @ 12:00pm (AEST)
Location: Webinar (online)
Don’t miss out – Get your tickets early!
Join this FREE WEBINAR presented by Dr Gül Dölen (USA).
TOPIC: Reopening critical periods with psychedelics (and why we gave octopuses MDMA)
Psychedelics are a broad category of compounds that induce altered states of consciousness. These drugs have shown remarkable promise for the treatment of debilitating disorders ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to depression and addiction. Although early studies focused on linking binding targets of psychedelics to their therapeutic effects, these pharmacological and biochemical explanations fail to account for the diversity, durability, and context dependence of psychedelics’ clinical and acute subjective effects. More recently, research from the Dölen lab offers fresh insights and demonstrates that a unifying property of psychedelics is that these compounds reopen critical periods, induce metaplasticity, and reorganize the extracellular matrix. Dr. Dölen will review this evidence and argue that the neurobiological and therapeutic effects of psychedelics challenge the biochemical imbalance model that has dominated translational neuroscience since the 1950’s, and favor instead, a learning model that better accounts for psychedelics’ unique therapeutic profile.
EVENT DETAILS
DATE: 17th June 2026
TIME: 11:55am (AEST) for 12:00pm start, finishing at 1:15pm
DURATION: 75 minutes (incl Q&A)
LOCATION: Online – a link will be emailed to you with the viewing details
The Presenters
Dr Gül Dölen (USA)
Dr. Gül Dölen is a Professor and the Bob & Renee Parsons Endowed Chair in the Department of Neuroscience, and Department of Psychology, the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr Dölen also maintains an Adjunct Professorship in Neuroscience and Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine. Dr. Dölen is the recipient of several prestigious awards including: the Joukowsky Family Foundation Outstanding Dissertation Award, the Conquer Fragile X Rising Star Award, the Angus MacDonald Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Society for Social Neuroscience Early Career Award, the Searle Scholars Award, and the Johns Hopkins University President’s Frontier Award.
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