ICPR 2022
September 22nd-24th, 2022
We are proud sponsors of this year’s Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR22) – the fifth edition of Europe’s leading conference on psychedelic research and therapy, organised by the OPEN Foundation, who have been advancing psychedelic research and therapies since 2007.
Over the course of 3 days, ICPR2022 offered a platform to showcase the latest findings in psychedelic science, to discuss novel approaches in psychedelic therapy, and to reflect on important issues around ethics, investment, and the hype surrounding psychedelics.
It featured world-leading experts from many academic disciplines, including psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, ethnobotany, and philosophy who came together to give a scientific conference for academics, therapists, researchers, clinicians, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and members of the public.
This year, our Founder and Executive Director, Amanda Feilding, spoke about LSD and the importance of changes in the cerebral blood supply:
“Until now, modern neuroscience has been almost exclusively focused on the impact of psychedelics on neuronal mechanisms, largely ignoring the fact that the serotonin system is deeply involved in many other important physiological mechanisms, in particular the regulation of vascular tone, and therefore the distribution of blood and energy resources in both the brain and the body.
In 1966, I met Bart Huges, a Dutch scientist of exceptional insight, who had two fascinating hypotheses about the way psychedelics may induce a radical shift in blood distribution within both body and brain, which may be at the origin of their consciousness altering effects. Since then, I have felt inspired by a ‘mission’ to test the reality of this theory with the best possible research. Finally, modern neuroscientific tools have reached a stage of sophistication that may allow me to address, in depth and from different angles, this potentially revolutionary hypothesis.
In this talk, I will introduce some of the key research projects I have been developing in the past year with leading experts in multiple complementary fields of neuroscience, in order to look, with an unprecedented level of precision and resolution, at the multiple physiological changes that occur in the brain under the effect of psychedelics, in particular LSD. From cutting-edge, high-resolution functional imaging of the mystical experience, to advanced optical imaging of the brain’s microvasculature, this new research programme may revolutionise the way we understand the underlying mechanisms of psychedelics, and potentially pave the way to new therapeutic applications, as well as increasing our potential to harness a wide spectrum of positive human states, such as wellbeing, awareness and creativity” – Amanda Feilding.
View the full programme here.