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Background & Motivation: As an alternative to widely used symptom- and substitution-oriented treatments in psychiatry, we develop novel process-oriented paradigms that are less focused on specific symptoms and their substitution by means of psychotropic drugs, but rather aim at resolving underlying maladaptive processes. Our iterative research and development program is based on clinical evidence that psychedelic compounds in supportive settings facilitate transformative experiences that are followed by rapid and sustainable decreases in anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress and addictive behaviors.
Psychedelic Research: While ketamine and psilocybin have been researched extensively in the past decades, the indigenous plant medicine ayahuasca currently stimulates a tremendous public and scientific interest due to its antidepressant, anxiolytic and anti-addictive properties. Using pharmaceutically standardized DMT and harmine formulations, we study its biomechanisms and efficacy for stress-related mood disorders. Using state-of-the-art multimodal neuroimaging (fMRI, EEG, PET) virtual reality paradigms (VR) and blood biomarkers, we investigate how pharmacological modulation of cerebral circuits modulates behavioral change, adaptive neuroplasticity and psychotherapeutic treatment outcomes. Methodologically, we apply novel brain imaging approaches such as topological data analysis to study the overall spatiotemporal organization of brain dynamics during altered states of consciousness. We explore the experiential diversity of psychedelic states using neurophenomenological approaches (e.g. micro-phenomenology) with a particular focus on transformative experiences and therapeutic change mechanisms. In collaboration with the Digital Society Initiative (DSI) we aim at developing machine learning ans AI methods for treatment monitoring and optimization of clinical trials with psychedelic drugs
Therapy Development: Psychotherapy research is moving away from the era of protocols for symptom-based diagnostic categories towards personalized, transdiagnostic and modular approaches. For clinical trials with psychedelics, we develop a specifically tailored process-based treatment manual to investigate the temporal dynamics of changeable transdiagnostic processes using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) technologies. This manual will allow the comparative empirical assessment of the potential of psychedelic compounds to specifically enhance the therapeutic efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions in different patient populations. Thus, our research investigates the use of psychotropic drugs in an evidence-based psychotherapeutic context, moving from substitution-oriented to process-oriented paradigms.
Keywords
Psychedelics
Ayahuasca & DMT
Rapid-acting Antidepressants
Stress-related Mood Disorders
Multimodal Neuroimaging
Biomarkers & Neuroplasticity
Psychological Flexibility
Mindfulness
Process-based Psychotherapy
Ecological Momentary Assessments
