Imperial College London

The Centre for Psychedelic Research studies the action (in the brain) and clinical use of psychedelics, with a focus on depression.

Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research

The center is part of Imperial College London, one of the top universities in the world. It was started with over £3 million (€­3.2/$3.8m) from five founding donors. The center builds on the world that has previously been done within Imperial College London.

Robin Carhart-Harris leads the research group and David Nutt (Drug Science) and Amanda Feilding (Beckley Foundation) are part of the team. Under Carhart-Harris the “[center] focuses on two main research themes: the use of psychedelics in mental health care; and as tools to probe the brain’s basis of consciousness. It will also investigate their potential for treating other conditions, including anorexia.”

The founding donors are: Anton Bilton, Shamil Chandaria (Ad Astra Trust), Tim Ferriss, The Nikean Foundation, The Tamas Family.

Key Staff

• Robin Carhart-Harris – Director & Head of Centre
• David Nutt – Deputy Head of Center
• David Erritzoe – Clinical Director of Centre

See the full team and collaborators here.

Research

You can find all the research that has been done by the group on their website. Some of the most notable papers are:

• The entropic brain – revisited (Carhart-Harris, 2018)
• Increased amygdala responses to emotional faces after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression (Roseman et al., 2018)
• DMT models the near-death experience (Timmermann et al., 2018)
• Psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression: fMRI-measured brain mechanisms (Carhart-Harris et al., 2017)

News

The news below is a small selection of the articles by on the Imperial College London’s website.

• Psychedelic drug DMT to be trialled in UK to treat depression (The Guardian, December 2020)
• New wave of psychedelic research yielding “exciting results” for mental health (April 2020)
• Science of microdosing psychedelics ‘remains patchy and anecdotal’, says review (July 2019)
• Imperial launches world’s first Centre for Psychedelics Research (April 2019)
• Risky research could herald mindful revolution (October 2016)