REGION — A $1.5 million gift to the University of California San Diego will help fund a research program into the biological and psychological effects of a powerful psychedelic in humans.
N,N-dimethyltryptamine, better known as DMT, can cause “imaginative visuals akin to the dream state” and some claim it can help with issues such as depression and addiction, a statement from UCSD reads. However, the actual impact of the drug on the brain, body and overall health is unknown.
Eugene Jhong gifted the university $1.5 million, which will use the funding to “implement continuous intravenous DMT infusion protocols to capture what is known as the ‘extended state’ of visions long associated with DMT,” the statement reads.
DMT is found in the body endogenously or naturally occurring in small amounts.
“Our goals are to employ multi-modal approaches to study extended state consciousness elucidated by DMT to further appreciate the nature of reality as well as the role of endogenous DMT in the human body,” said Jon Dean, postdoctoral scholar in the UCSD Department of Anesthesiology and director of the Division of DMT Research at the UCSD Psychedelic Health and Research Initiative. “Reliable methods for measuring DMT directly in the human brain and bodily fluids do not exist, so the intriguing possibilities that endogenous DMT may play a role in consciousness, dreaming and protecting the brain from trauma are still scientific speculation.”
The study is intended to map physical and neurological responses to DMT during longer windows of the psychedelic’s peak.
“We will learn more about how the unique effects of DMT on consciousness interacts with human physiology to understand how these profound psychedelic effects evoked by DMT impact our well-being,” said Fadel Zeidan, associate professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at UCSD School of Medicine. “Our long-term objective is to gain a better understanding of how DMT and other psychedelics could be used in a therapeutic manner to address pain, trauma and various medical conditions related to the brain.”
UC San Diego is the only university in the U.S. that has a dedicated division to conduct extended-state DMT research.
“I am pleased to support this innovative effort to explore extended DMT and am confident it will shed new and important insight into the question of our true nature,” Jhong said.
