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  • OUTLOOK

How MDMA resensitizes the brain

Gül Dölen explains how psychedelics restore the brain’s capacity for plasticity, which fades with age, and make possible new mental-health therapies.
  1. Alla Katsnelson

    1. Alla Katsnelson is a science writer based in Southampton, Massachusetts.

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In 2019, neuroscientist Gül Dölen’s laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, found that the psychedelic drug MDMA resensitizes the brains of adult mice so they can learn from their social environment in a way that’s normally reserved for adolescence. Dölen spoke to Nature about the potential power of using psychedelic compounds to harness such critical periods.

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Nature 609, S86 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02871-w

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Psychedelic medicine, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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