University of California Berkley

UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics is a (small) psychedelic science and education centre founded in September 2020. The UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP) is exploring psychedelics as tools for understanding the brain and mind, enhancing well-being, and deepening spirituality. Researchers here are using an interdisciplinary approach that combines basic science, training, and public education to investigate the short- and long-term effects of psychedelics on perception, cognition, and emotion in healthy volunteers.

UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics

The centre will conduct research using psychedelics to investigate cognition, perception and emotion and their biological bases in the human brain.

“In collaboration with faculty from UCSF and the Graduate Theological Union, UC Berkeley researchers are using an interdisciplinary approach that combines basic science, training, and public education to investigate the short- and long-term effects of psychedelics on perception, cognition, and emotion in healthy volunteers, to help train practitioners to safely facilitate psychedelic experiences in therapeutic and research settings, and to advance public understanding of psychedelic science, policy, and business. The BCSP is administratively housed in UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and is directed by Michael Silver.”

UC Berkley also hosts the Global Initiative for Psychedelic Science Economics (GIPSE). This network of health economists is diving deep into the economic case to be made for psychedelic-assisted therapy. Part of this work is being done in cooperation with Usona.

The centre is (initially) funded by an anonymous donor ($1.25 million).