Position: Assistant Professor

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Twitter: @NL_Mason

My research is driven by my desire to find effective treatments for psychiatric disorders, particularly anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. There is ever-growing evidence that substances such as psychedelic drugs and cannabis provide rapid and persisting symptomatic relief. My question has always been “how”: how do these substances work (to reduce symptoms), and how can we maximize efficacy of these substances, while reducing harms. In pursuit of my research goals, I conduct placebo-controlled, experimental drug trials. Here, I combine methods from psychopharmacology and cognitive neuroscience to determine drug-induced neuroadaptations, and their impact on affect, behavior, and cognition. To complement this work, I also conduct naturalistic field work and survey studies. Here, I gather data from large samples of drug users, gaining real-word insights into their experiences, to inform the development of new hypotheses which can be tested in experimental trials.