Psychedelics and Belief
a psychedelic research project I've recently begun
This is something I’ve been thinking about since 2017 when I first began to learn about psychedelics: how do the effects of psychedelics affect our beliefs?
I’m not sure why it’s taken me so many years to start researching this in earnest, but I’ve finally done something that will commit me to this project: I’ve applied to present on this topic for this year’s PsychedelX virtual conference hosted by the Intercollegiate Psychedelics Network (IPN). I’m the coordinator and editor of the IPN blog and helped organize the first PsychedelX program in 2021; my involvement in IPN is now completely disconnected from the team that organizes this virtual conference.
So, here is the title and abstract I submitted…
Psychedelics as Agents for Transformational Belief Change
Psychedelics have been shown to have therapeutic potential for numerous forms of mental illness (Costa et al., 2022). Neuroscience research on psychedelics suggests that their therapeutic efficacy is related to their ability to disrupt activity in the default mode network (Gattuso et al) and selectively enhance neuroplasticity in the cortex (Olson, 2022, Vargas et al., 2022). These neurophysiological effects are often correlated to an enhanced ability to transform dysfunctional cognitive and behavioral patterns that underlie mental illness (Catlow, 2013). One subset of cognition that is central to what makes us human (Seitz, 2021), and seemingly largely overlooked in the psychological literature on psychedelics, is belief. Belief change is central to the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychological transformation (Beck and Haigh, 2014). Like any cognitive construct, beliefs are encoded by neurons in our central nervous system. Dysfunctional beliefs underlie many forms of mental illness (Beck and Haigh, 2014). The neurophysiological effects of psychedelics and their therapeutic efficacy in conjunction with support from trained clinicians suggest that an overlooked aspect of the therapeutic potential of psychedelics may be their ability to facilitate transformational belief change. In this presentation, I plan to construct and present a theoretical framework for this thesis, aiming to bridge the gap in current understanding based on a review of existing literature on psychedelic neuropsychopharmacology, the neuroscience of belief change, and research on cognitive behavioral therapy.
This abstract will surely be revised and improved, but that’s the unedited version I submitted for the application.
I hope to share more as my research on this topic progresses…
Thanks for reading!
Luke
P.S. I don’t have any grand plans for writing on Substack, but its something I’ve been wanting to do for a while and I keep putting off for lack of such grand plans. I felt inspired to share this abstract I wrote and I hope this first step in posting here will inspire me to continue writing more here in the future.