123. Memory, Movies and Psychedelics with Prof Ravi Das

·56 min·3 clips

The memory reactivation plus ketamine group reduced drinking up to nine months later.

Ravi Das joins the hosts to talk about his psychopharmacology research at UCL. He describes work aimed at building better treatments for substance use, eating, and stress disorders, and the conversation quickly lands on the practical problem of separating a real drug effect from placebo and expectation. Placebo is the hard part. The hosts and guest talk through why placebo effects are so difficult to manage in psychedelic studies and why active comparators help. D-cycloserine comes up as one active comparator, described as a partial NMDA receptor agonist that has been used in alcohol studies and may boost synaptic plasticity in a way that overlaps with part of the hoped-for psychedelic effect. A non psychoactive psychedelic is discussed alongside it, giving another way to probe similar receptor mechanisms without producing the full trip. The point is not to remove every source of bias. It is to measure as much of it as possible and get a better read on how placebo and nocebo effects shape the outcome. The conversation then widens to the kinds of outcomes the team wants to track. Rather than chasing a single endpoint, the study design looks across cognition, behavior, and well-being, because the hosts note that they still do not know exactly what kind of change matters most. Brain scanning appears before dosing and again after it. What makes that especially interesting is the scanning setup itself, which uses full-length movies rather than the more familiar resting-state approach. The episode also touches on nitrous oxide research. That thread points to a broader interest in how altered states and pharmacological interventions can be studied with tighter controls and sharper comparisons. Throughout, the hosts keep asking for plain explanations and definitions, and Das answers in a way that stays technical without losing a general listener. The tone stays measured. When the discussion turns to placebo groups, efficacy estimates, and real-world clinical practice, it stays grounded in what can actually be measured. By the end, the conversation has sketched a research program that is method-first, clinically minded, and open about uncertainty. It is a strong fit for listeners who want the research process itself, not just the headline about psychedelics.

As heard by us

A careful look at how psychedelic research is built, tested, and made more convincing.

Ravi Das spends this conversation on the hardest question in psychedelic research: how to separate treatment effects from placebo effects and from the drug experience itself.

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Why you'd press play

If you like careful psychedelic research, this one gets into the design work.

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