A donation of $1.5 million has been gifted to the UC San Diego Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative to research DMT by philanthropist Eugene Jhong.
The gifted donation will help launch a new research programme within the UC San Diego Psychedelic and Health Research Initiative.
The research intends to further understanding of the states of consciousness induced by DMT and how it could benefit human health, as well as to learn more about the biological and psychological effects of DMT in humans.
The research project will see UC San Diego researchers implement continuous intravenous DMT infusion protocols to capture what is known as the “extended state” of visions long associated with DMT, and plans to map the phenomenological, neurological and physiological responses to DMT during the longer windows of time created with infusion protocols.
Jhong stated: “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.”
Principal investigators Fadel Zeidan, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and Jon Dean, PhD, postdoctoral scholar in the UC San Diego Department of Anesthesiology and director of the Division of DMT Research at the UC San Diego Psychedelic Health and Research Initiative, will lead the programme.
Dean commented: “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.
“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.”
“We are beyond grateful to Eugene Jhong for his visionary support of this novel research effort,” added Zeidan.
“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. 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.”
