How Psychedelics Can Help With PTSD

This piece, by Mariano Frare-Finnerty, was published on 02/25/25. The original episode was aired on 11/08/24.

A recent Radiolab episode explored Turkish neuroscientist Gül Dölen's research on critical periods in the brain, which are windows of heightened plasticity that allow for rapid learning. These periods typically close after childhood, but Dölen’s research investigated whether psychedelics can reopen them in adulthood, potentially aiding in healing, relearning, and recovery from conditions like PTSD and stroke. If possible, reopening these critical periods could revolutionize treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders. 

Dölen's lab decided to study mice at different ages and, through their research, confirmed that teenage mice were more sensitive to peer behavior than adults. Dölen's research led her to discover that this sensitivity was linked to oxytocin, known as the "Bonding Hormone," which made younger neurons in the mice highly receptive to social learning. Dölen's team then decided to test where certain drugs could enhance social bonding in mice. For instance, her team used MDMA (Ecstasy), which is a drug known for enhancing social bonding, to see if this could restore behavioral learning abilities in adult mice. A couple of days after taking MDMA, the adult mice started to behave like teenagers again, meaning they had learned from their peers just as the teenage mice had. However, MDMA only reopened a small window of social learning if it was given to the mice in a social setting, as mice who took it alone showed no change whatsoever.

Through further research, Dölen ended up finding out that other psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin, and ketamine, all reopened critical periods within the mice's brains. This led Dölen to believe that psychedelics allow for critical periods to be reignited in the brain. For Dölen, this discovery was momentous as she felt it could revolutionize neurological rehabilitation. For instance, in cases of PTSD and Depression, antidepressants like SSRIs only mask symptoms, requiring medicine to be taken for daily use for years and years. However, the potential of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy would only need two to three doses and would produce long-term healing. Dölen's theory suggests that this would work as psychedelics reopen critical periods, allowing patients to unlearn harmful patterns and replace them with healthier ones.

Currently, Dölen's is launching a clinical trial to see if psychedelics can reopen motor learning in stroke patients, as they plan to administer psychedelics to stroke survivors more than a year after their stroke and pair it with physical therapy. If this experiment proves successful, it could retain the brain to restore lost motor skills, which was previously thought impossible. This could have incredible benefits in other areas such as Cochlear implant adaptation, Traumatic brain injury recovery, Learning disabilities, Addiction treatment, and Therapeutic reprocessing of trauma.

However, there are still immense risks with working with these types of drugs. When a critical period is opened, the brain is highly impressionable, like a child's. Thus, if negative things occur during usage, these effects could be life-changing and threatening for the user, as they could lock in harmful patterns. Overall, though, this research could fundamentally change how we treat mental health, neurorehabilitation, and even learning disorders.

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