Speaker Bio
Dr. Dölen earned her M.D., Ph.D. at Brown University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University. Dr. Dölen is currently an Associate professor of Neuroscience and Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine. Her laboratory has discovered a novel mechanism that could account for the broad range of therapeutic applications for which psychedelics are currently being tested. Specifically, the Dolen lab has discovered critical periods can be reopened with psychedelic drugs like MDMA (Nardou, et al Nature, 2019), LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, and ibogaine (Nardou et al, Nature in Press). Importantly, understanding psychedelics through this framework dramatically expands the scope of disorders that might benefit from adjunct therapy with psychedelics, an approach she has dubbed the PHATHOM project (Psychedelic Healing: Adjunct Therapy Harnessing Opened Malleability, www.phathomproject.org).
ICPR 2024 Abstract
Reopening critical periods with psychedelics: basic mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities
Dr. Dölen is a pioneer and world leader of psychedelics research. She has discovered the synaptic and circuit mechanisms underlying social reward learning (Dölen, et al Nature, 2013; Hung et al Science, 2017; Lewis et al., Neuron, 2020) and shown that this type of learning is constrained by a critical period (Nardou, et al Nature, 2019). Furthermore, psychedelic drugs like MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, and ibogaine are able to reopen the social reward learning critical period, by targeting neural mechanisms governing other critical periods (Nardou, et al, Nature, 2019 and Nardou et al, Nature 2023). Building on these insights, she has formulated the hypothesis psychedelics may be the long sought “master key” for unlocking critical periods across the brain. Importantly, understanding psychedelics through this framework dramatically expands the scope of disorders (including autism, stroke, and allergy) that might benefit from adjunct therapy with psychedelics, an approach she has dubbed the PHATHOM project (Psychedelic Healing: Adjunct Therapy Harnessing Opened Malleability, www.phathomproject.org).