4 Comments

So fascinating to read about how endeavors to scale plant medicine are unfolding. Thank you for publishing this! It really gave me a good sense of the mindset and intentions of this particular researcher.

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Sorry but this sounds entirely like a scam really. Academics dreaming of ways to get access to those mountains of corporate booty lying around, and corrupting academia in the process. Big sigh ...Sad the way the world works these days. Yeah I don't really believe in neuroscience either. Brains are just way too damn complicated so far.

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If you don't believe in neuroscience then why are you reading articles about neuroscience. Dr Olson is describing how new drugs get developed. We make analogs of known pharmacological compounds. This is how Hoffman discovered LSD. He was looking at ergotamine analogs that caused uterine muscles to contract. However you are right to be suspicious of Big Pharma.

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This is a most interesting idea, to separate the psychedelic actions of this class of compounds from actions on neuroplasticity. One such example that comes to mind is hydergine, an ergoloid that for long has been know to modulate synaptic plasticity. This raises the question of which molecular site(s) of action may mediate the actions of drugs like hydergine on synaptic plasticity.

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