Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves..

Today, we’re speaking with Reed Finlay, a visionary designer and the founder of Set and Setting Design, a company dedicated to creating transformative spaces for healing and human connection.

Reed’s journey began in traditional architecture, where he spent over 25 years designing everything from high-end homes to sustainable, off-grid buildings. But his career took a radical turn after a life-changing plant medicine experience that revealed the profound impact of the environment on human consciousness.

Since then, Reed has focused on designing spaces specifically intended to support healing, growth, and transformation. From psychedelic ceremony rooms to retreat centers and even the Temple at Burning Man, Reed's work transcends conventional architecture by weaving together elements of nature, mysticism, and human psychology.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The power of set and setting in shaping psychedelic experiences

• How sacred space design can deepen emotional healing

• His transformative experience that inspired his career shift

• The role of architecture in the emerging field of psychedelic therapy

• How principles from Donald Winnicott’s "holding environment" influence his designs

• The intersection of spirituality, community, and space in modern culture

• And much more.

And now, I bring you my conversation with Reed Finlay.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

• Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves.

Today, we’re speaking with Josh White, the founder and executive director of Fireside Project, an innovative nonprofit that offers psychedelic coaching and real-time peer support for people navigating psychedelic experiences.

After a career as a lawyer representing the city and county of San Francisco, he shifted his focus to the mental health space and ultimately combined his two passions—psychedelics and crisis support—into Fireside Project.

Fireside Project is best known for its free, confidential psychedelic support line, offering assistance to people during and after their experiences. Since launching in 2021, the hotline has facilitated over 30,000 conversations, helping individuals process everything from mystical awakenings to difficult trips. Now, Josh and his team are expanding their work through Fireside Certified Psychedelic Coaching, a service designed to provide long-term, nonclinical support to those integrating profound psychedelic insights into their daily lives.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The origins of Fireside Project and its mission

• How the support line works and the types of calls they receive

• The launch of Fireside’s coaching program and the growing need for structured psychedelic guidance

• The difference between harm reduction and transformational support

• How psychedelic support fits into the future of mental health care

• And much more.

And now, I bring you my conversation with Josh White.

Subscribe now

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves.

Today, we’re speaking with Tom Morgan, a writer, thinker, and founder of Leading Edge, a community dedicated to exploring human transformation and the evolution of intelligence.

Tom’s journey began on the trading floors of Wall Street, where he built a successful career in finance before experiencing a profound and disorienting shift in consciousness—a spontaneous spiritual awakening that forced him to reconsider everything he knew about reality, mental health, and human intelligence.

His work synthesizes ideas from complexity theory, depth psychology, neuroscience, and spiritual traditions to explore how individuals and society at large can transition toward what he calls attractor intelligence—a hidden force guiding us toward wholeness and complexity.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The role of spontaneous spiritual experiences in modern life

• The overlap between mental illness and spiritual crisis

• The risks of meditation, psychedelics, and other psychotechnologies

• His experience with the "Dark Night of the Soul" and how he emerged stronger

• The founding of Leading Edge and its mission to support high-agency individuals in personal transformation

• How the left and right hemispheres of the brain influence culture, capitalism, and our understanding of intelligence

• And much more.

And now, I bring you my conversation with Tom Morgan.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

• Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves.

Today, I am speaking with Gabe Charalambides, a former aerospace engineer turned mental health and psychedelic entrepreneur.

Gabe is the founder of Odyssey, a pioneering organization offering psilocybin-assisted retreats and private sessions under Oregon’s psilocybin legalization framework.

Gabe’s journey began in the world of aerospace engineering, where he spent years designing cutting-edge technology. However, his personal experiences with meditation, Buddhism, and psychedelics opened a new path—one focused on exploring the human mind and fostering healing through intentional psychedelic experiences.

With Odyssey, Gabe has created a platform that combines deep respect for tradition with an evidence-based, accessible approach to psilocybin therapy.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Gabe’s evolution from aerospace engineer to mental health entrepreneur

• The founding story and ethos behind Odyssey

• Insights into running psilocybin-assisted retreats in Oregon under its novel legislative framework

• The interplay between psychedelics, meditation, and neuroplasticity

• The unique challenges and opportunities in tailoring retreats for specific needs, from bereavement to leadership development

• And much more.

And now, I bring you my conversation with Gabe Charalambides.

Subscribe now

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves.

Today, I am speaking with Hailey Gilmore, the former Medical Science Liason at MAPS PBC, Lykos Therapeutics, and founder of Luminous Research Consulting

Hailey joined MAPS in 2020, where she spearheaded their investigator-initiated trials (IIT) program, overseeing how MDMA-assisted therapy could address diverse clinical indications. Her role involved navigating complex regulatory landscapes, establishing protocols, and engaging with researchers worldwide.

Today, as the founder of Luminous Research she leverages her expertise to guide organizations in bringing psychedelics and other innovative therapies to market.

Hailey is a public health scientist with a master’s degree in epidemiology and biostatistics from UC Berkeley. She has spent over 15 years in clinical trial management, initially in the HIV prevention field, where she contributed to groundbreaking studies such as the efficacy of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in preventing HIV transmission.

This conversation is a masterclass in understanding psychedelic therapy development's nuanced challenges and opportunities.

Here’s what we cover:

• The Landscape of Psychedelic Therapy: Hailey breaks down the logistical hurdles of bringing MDMA-assisted therapy to market, from FDA approvals to state-by-state legislative processes and the complex interplay of insurance, healthcare institutions, and drug rescheduling.

• Insights from HIV Research: Drawing parallels with PrEP’s rollout, Hailey provides a framework for how psychedelics might navigate similar adoption barriers, including clinician training, insurance buy-in, and the balancing act between small, agile clinics and large academic centers.

• The Role of Smaller Clinics vs. Academic Institutions: She reflects on how smaller clinics might be better positioned to implement MDMA-assisted therapy quickly, given their flexibility, while larger institutions struggle to turn their metaphorical cruise ships.

• Systemic Challenges in the Psychedelic Field: From the intricacies of DEA licensing to the limitations of current research funding, Hailey outlines the systemic barriers that continue to slow progress in this field.

• Optimism Amid Complexity: Despite the delays in MDMA-assisted therapy’s approval, Hailey believes that public-private partnerships and innovative trial designs could unlock new opportunities for psychedelic research and implementation.

Finally, we explore the potential impact of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s potential appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration. Could this mark a turning point for federal policy on psychedelics? Hailey weighs the possibilities and shares her vision for how public health could guide this evolving conversation.

And now, I bring you my conversation with Hailey Gilmore.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves.

Today, we are speaking with Dr. James Cooke, neuroscientist, philosopher, and author of the recently released book, Dawn of Mind: How Matter Became Conscious and Alive.

This groundbreaking work offers a bold new perspective on the nature of consciousness, bridging the gap between science and spirituality, and challenging conventional paradigms about mind, matter, and the fabric of experience itself.

In Dawn of Mind, James explores the "hard problem" of consciousness through the lens of his Living Mirror Theory, which proposes that consciousness arises as a relational process intrinsic to all living systems.

The book deftly synthesizes insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and contemplative traditions to offer a compelling framework for understanding subjective experience, suffering, and the relief of suffering. It also challenges readers to reconsider the boundaries between self and world and between the physical and experiential realms.

Our conversation today is a tour through:

• The Living Mirror Theory and its implications for understanding consciousness as a fundamental aspect of life.

• The journey behind Dawn of Mind, including how James’ spontaneous mystical experience at age 13 catalyzed his lifelong inquiry into the nature of reality.

• How somatic practices align with his theory and provide a direct pathway to healing and insight.

• The synthesis of modern neuroscience and ancient contemplative traditions, creating a holistic view of the mind and its place in the universe.

• And much more.

And now, I bring you my conversation with James Cooke.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Before we dive in, please fill out the below brief reader survey—it takes 60 seconds—to help us better understand what you like and would like to see more of from The Trip Report in 2025!

The Trip Report Reader Survey

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves.

Today, I am speaking with Dillan DiNardo, CEO of Mindstate Design Labs, an innovative drug development company taking a unique approach to developing next-generation psychedelic medicines.

Mindstate's approach builds on the legacy of Sasha and Ann Shulgin, the pioneering chemists often referred to as the godparents of psychedelics. The company's scientific foundation comes from Dr. Tom Ray, a polymath scientist and friend and collaborator of the Shulgins.

What makes Mindstate's approach unique is its systematic analysis of both pharmacological and phenomenological data—studying not just how drugs interact with receptors in the brain, but also the subjective experiences they produce. This builds on decades of carefully documented experiences from psychonauts around the world.

The company is developing what they call a "primer-probe" approach, using carefully selected combinations of compounds to achieve specific experiential effects. Their lead candidate, Moxie (MSD-1), recently received FDA clearance to begin human trials.

Dillan comes to this work with a background in biotech venture capital, bringing a pragmatic approach to drug development while embracing the complexity and potential of psychedelic medicines.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The origin story of Mindstate and their novel approach to drug development

• How they analyze and quantify subjective psychedelic experiences

• Their "primer-probe" methodology using drug combinations

• The concept of "psychedelic tofu" - compounds that can amplify or modify other psychedelic effects

• Their vision for precision-designed altered states of consciousness

• The regulatory pathway for combination psychedelic medicines

• The broader implications of their research for understanding consciousness

And now, I bring you my conversation with Dillan DiNardo.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

“We’re seeing converging evidence that not having access to sensation is often a predictor of poor mental health vulnerability. Maintaining access to sensation in the face of distress is a really nice indicator that you’re going to be dynamic and resilient.”

—Norman Farb, Ph.D.

Before we dive in, please fill out the below brief reader survey—it takes 60 seconds—to help us better understand what you like and would like to see more of from The Trip Report in 2025!

The Trip Report Reader Survey

Also, I want to make a plug for our friends at the Spirit Tech Collective (STC), who just launched the Spirit Tech Database, the first of several ecosystem-building initiatives to support a flourishing Spirit Tech sector.

Inspired by the Climate Tech movement, the STC is a newly launched initiative on a mission to increase the funding and talent flowing into the Spirit Tech sector by 50x over the next 10 years.

They just launched their alpha prototype, capturing their vision, the initial definition for the sector, and an MVP database of 250+ leading Spirit Tech organizations.

Visit the Spirit Tech Collective

What I am about to lay out is, by definition, speculative. It is my intuition and understanding based on my reading of several different but related lines of research. I believe it is directionally accurate, and where it is wrong, it is wrong in an interesting and informative way.

If you have thoughts, comments, suggestions, or criticism, hit reply and let me know!

Here is the TL;DR

1. Neuroticism is a common transdiagnostic factor and predictor of psychopathology. People high in neuroticism expect the worst, see danger even in harmless situations, and have difficulty managing their emotions, which are often negatively valenced.

2. Through the lens of Predictive Processing, neuroticism is understood as an information processing strategy called “Better Safe Than Sorry,” which tends to be low on sensory-perceptual detail, thus allowing threat-expecting beliefs to dominate the conscious experience.

3. This strategy creates a self-fulfilling prophecy because perceived stress shuts down our ability to take in sensory information, which does not allow for belief updating, thereby trapping an individual in a neurotic schema.

4. Overcoming this detrimental strategy requires intentional exposure to perhaps threatening sensory data in a safe, supported, and trusted environment, such that the fear and reflexive discounting can be overturned and sensory data can be allowed to update one’s model.

5. Bottom-up neurotechnologies—which include light, sound, haptic, thermal, and interoceptive sensory stimulation—offer a promising tool for updating this maladaptive information processing strategy.

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Bottom-Up Neurotech: Harnessing Sensation to Treat Psychopathology

In the fourth segment in our Clinic of the Future Series, we looked at “Emergent Neurotechnologies,” which focused on transcranial-focused ultrasound (tFUS), one of the more exciting non-invasive neurotechnologies en route to the clinic for various conditions.

The idea with tFUS and other neurostimulatory technologies that “zap” the brain with magnetic fields, electricity, soundwaves, or other forms of energy is that they can modulate specific brain structures involved in psychopathology, like addiction or depression. 

Modulating simply means upregulating or downregulating the neural activity of a specific brain region.

Let’s call this approach Top-Down Neuromodulation.

It’s top-down not just because the brain is in the head and the head is at the top of the human body but also because the emerging view of the brain as the organ of prediction and the constructor of experience is referred to as the “top-down” aspect of experience. 

In contrast, incoming sensory information—like sight, sound, touch, and interoception—is bottom-up.

This naturally leads to the question, “Is there such a thing as Bottom-Up Neuromodulation?”

In today’s dispatch, I want to share what I have been learning about Bottom-Up Neurotech and why I think it is an exciting and promising class of intervention for treating psychopathology.

The Predictive Brain and Psychopathology

Previously, in Human Flourishing in the Age of Computational Neuroscience, we noted a few essential features of an emerging theory of the brain to recall for today’s discussion:

• The brain is the organ of prediction and protection—it constantly generates models of the world based on past experiences. It uses these models to predict incoming sensory information, with survival (not accuracy) being the highest value.

• Our perception is an actively created model known as the generative model.

• Rather than passively receiving information, our brains actively shape our experiences by comparing predictions based on past experiences with incoming (bottom-up) sensory data. 

• If the generative model accurately predicts the incoming sensory data, it reinforces the existing world model. However, if there's a mismatch—a prediction error—the brain revises its model to better reflect the sensory data.

In short, in this understanding—known as the Predictive Processing Framework—what we perceive (sight, sound, touch, hunger, thirst, fear, pain, etc.) is the output of our brain’s predictions about the world checked against incoming sense data.

The predictive model updates through the process of prediction error minimization by comparing incoming sensory data against the predictive model.

Importantly, a faulty process of updating the generative model in response to prediction errors is the basis of psychopathology.

This is the basis of a compelling 2020 paper titled Better Safe Than Sorry: A Common Signature Of General Vulnerability For Psychopathology, which posits that the common trait among all psychopathologies is the inability of the brain to update its generative model in response to new evidence.

Better Safe Than Sorry (BSTS)

It has long been established that neuroticism is a significant transdiagnostic factor in both causing and sustaining psychopathology.

Neuroticism is a common transdiagnostic factor because it is a core vulnerability underlying a wide range of psychological disorders. 

It refers to a tendency toward negative emotionality, including anxiety, mood instability, and sensitivity to perceived stress.

People high in neuroticism are more likely to experience intense and frequent negative emotions, such as fear, sadness, and anger, and often have difficulty regulating these emotions.

As a result, neuroticism is a common factor in depression, anxiety, PTSD, addictions, and other conditions.

The authors of BSTS note:

“…one psychobiological dimension that increases the risk for psychopathology and stated that “negative emotionality (neuroticism) lies at the heart of the general factor of psychopathology”

In the language of predictive processing, neuroticism is the inability for the generative model to update in response to prediction errors:

Again, from the BSTS paper:

“This implies information processing that tends to be low on sensory-perceptual detail, giving room to threat-related categorical priors to dominate conscious experience and to chronic uncertainty/surprise due to a stagnated error reduction process. This common information processing strategy has beneficial effects on the short term, but important costs on the longer term.”

In other words, we can understand neuroticism—the common factor in all psychopathology—as an information-processing strategy that ignores sensory information because the default assumption is that it is threatening.

From an evolutionary perspective, neuroticism as a trait can be understood as an adaptive response to repeated threatening experiences.

From the predictive processing perspective, this involves a lowering of the threshold for threat detection, and as a result, innocuous, non-threatening sensory experiences become perceived as threatening and thus avoided.

Sensory Exposure & Sense Foraging

The authors of BSTS offer a solution:

“The critical element advanced here—releasing stagnated error reduction by helping individuals to disengage from defensive-action tendencies during processing of aversive information—involves a fundamental change in psychophysiological response set to process potentially threatening information.

…we suggest that a critical element in all treatment approaches is some kind of exposure, defined as an attentive, open, and nondefensive way of processing threat-relevant information.”

I know what you’re thinking: Exposure Therapy—the therapeutic approach in which patients, with the help of a therapist, relive traumatic events and memories to reduce avoidance and anxiety responses.

However, the challenge of this approach is the high dropout rate, duration, and potential for making things worse.

An alternative approach was recently developed by University of Toronto Neuroscientist Norman Farb, which he calls “Sense Foraging.”

Sense Foraging

Sense foraging is the intentional exploration and engagement with sensory experiences. 

The practice involves actively seeking out and attending to various sensory inputs, from the subtle sensation of breath to the complex interplay of environmental stimuli.

Sense foraging serves as a direct counterforce to the BSTS strategy by encouraging active engagement with sensory information rather than its automatic dismissal.

The practice of sense foraging experiences can help individuals rebuild trust in their sensory processing systems, develop finer discrimination of sensory signals, reduce automatic threat responses to neutral sensory input, and strengthen the brain's capacity for accurate sensory prediction.

Supercharged Sense Foraging with Bottom-Up Neurotech

Bottom-up neurotech represents a novel class of therapeutic technologies that work by providing programmatically tailored sensory experiences to recalibrate maladaptive information processing patterns. 

Unlike top-down approaches that directly modulate neural activity through external energy, bottom-up neurotech harnesses the brain's natural capacity for sensory processing and belief updating.

These technologies include:

• Multi-sensory virtual reality environments

• Programmable light and sound experiences

• Haptic feedback systems

• Thermal stimulation devices

• Interoceptive awareness tools

The therapeutic potential of bottom-up neurotech lies in its ability to address the BSTS information processing strategy characteristic of neuroticism.

By providing carefully calibrated sensory experiences in safe, controlled environments, these technologies can help individuals overcome their reflexive discounting of sensory information.

Consider someone with anxiety who categorically interprets bodily sensations as threatening. A bottom-up neurotech intervention might use haptic feedback to generate similar sensations while providing a safe context that allows for new interpretations. Over time, this exposure helps update the brain’s predictive models, reducing the automatic threat response.

The theoretical advantage of this approach over traditional exposure therapy is its precision and scalability. Bottom-up neurotech can deliver consistent, measurable sensory experiences that can be carefully titrated to match an individual's therapeutic needs. This allows for gradual exposure that builds confidence in processing sensory information without overwhelming the system.

Most importantly, bottom-up neurotech offers a path to updating maladaptive predictive models without requiring direct engagement with traumatic memories or situations. By providing novel sensory experiences in safe contexts, these technologies can help break the self-reinforcing cycle of the BSTS strategy, allowing individuals to develop more adaptive ways of processing and interpreting sensory information.

The Promise of Bottom-Up Neuromodulation

Bottom-up neurotech represents a paradigm shift in treating psychopathology.

By combining the intuitive wisdom of sense foraging with precise technological control, it may be possible to offer systematic pathways for updating maladaptive predictive models. This approach, in theory, addresses the core information processing dysfunction that underlies various psychological conditions.

As these technologies mature, they may offer a gentler, more effective way to help individuals trapped in neurotic processing patterns rediscover trust in their sensory experience and develop more adaptive ways of engaging with the world.

In the evolving landscape of mental health treatment, bottom-up neurotech emerges not just as a novel therapeutic tool but as a bridge between our understanding of the predictive brain and practical interventions for psychological well-being.

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Welcome to another Special Dispatch from The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves. 

Today, I am speaking with Matt Zorn, a litigator and partner at Yetter Coleman.

With a practice spanning antitrust, competition, IP, and a deep focus on controlled substances and drug regulation, Matt brings a unique perspective to the shifting landscape of drug policy and health agency reform.

What makes this discussion especially relevant today is the backdrop of the recent political realignment in the U.S., with RFK Jr.’s role within a Trump administration and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative looming over the political landscape.

As a result, we find ourselves at a unique inflection point to reassess drug policy and, perhaps, a pivotal moment of mental health, psychedelics, and regulatory processes.

Matt’s insights don’t shy away from the complex history and challenges facing the psychedelic movement and broader healthcare reform. He argues that the FDA’s structure itself may not be fit for purpose in modern mental health treatment.

In our conversation, we explore:

• The origins and inefficiencies of current drug regulation processes.

• Why the Controlled Substances Act and FDA efficacy requirements may hinder real-world applications.

• How reforming clinical trial processes or even fundamentally changing statutory requirements could reshape the space.

• Concrete ideas for reforming the system, including lessons drawn from MDMA’s recent regulatory struggles.

• How drug development pathways intertwine with controlled substances law, patent incentives, and the broader economic landscape of pharmaceuticals.

Without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Matt Zorn.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney 

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Welcome to a Special Dispatch of The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves.

Today, I’m joined by Nick Gillespie, Editor-at-Large of Reason magazine, to discuss the results of the US election and specifically what it might mean for psychedelic policy, research, and drug development.  

As a veteran observer of the intersection between politics, regulation, and civil liberties, Nick offers a unique lens through which to examine the evolving dynamics of psychedelics, the regulatory state, and how the incoming Trump administration might approach the matter.

Our conversation focuses on the curious coalition between former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President-Elect Donald Trump, who has said he will let Kennedy “go wild on health” through a yet-to-be-announced position in his administration. 

This partnership raises critical questions about the potential for sweeping changes to policy in the United States—particularly as it relates to psychedelics, alternative therapies, and broader health reforms.

We explore the paradoxical nature of this political moment, in which historical stigmas are shifting, and new coalitions are forming. 

With drug policy historically defined by prohibition, could we now be on the verge of a psychedelic renaissance fueled by executive power and bipartisan pragmatism? 

We unpack the complexities of de-scheduling psychedelics, the implications of potential federal support for therapeutic use, and how the cultural, medical, and regulatory terrain could evolve.

In typical fashion, Nick brings clarity and insight to a conversation that touches on the FDA's recent rejection of MDMA-assisted therapy, the mixed outcomes of state-level psychedelic ballot initiatives, and the broader cultural shifts that frame America's approach to mental health, addiction, and drug legalization.

This is a moment where history, politics, and the psychedelic renaissance converge—an era brimming with opportunity and risk, with the potential for substantive change at hand.

Without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Nick Gillespie.

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Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney 

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Now, the real work begins.

At the end of August, when you, Mr. Kennedy, dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Mr. Trump, a coalition of strange bedfellows was formed, many heads exploded, and a new acronym was introduced to the zeitgeist: MAHA.

Make America Healthy Again.

Had you simply made “improving healthcare access” your campaign message, it would have failed.

That is because it is quite clear that something has gone woefully wrong such that the prevalence of chronic diseases has skyrocketed from 7.5% in 1935, when the first epidemiological study on chronic disease was done, to over 60% in 2020 while more than 90% of the $4.5 trillion in annual health care spending is for chronic and mental health conditions.

Patients are underwhelmed and frustrated with their care, and doctors are disheartened by working in a system designed to reward greed at the expense of patient care.

Throughout your campaign, you have repeatedly highlighted the root causes of our healthcare woes—a disease-promoting food system, regulatory and media capture by the pharmaceutical industry, and bad financial incentives—and the American people responded.

Running on a platform of addressing the massive increase in chronic disease burden—including mental illnesses, obesity, type II diabetes, cancer, and others—you have earned the enthusiastic support from many Americans and at least the benefit of the doubt from many others, even if they won’t admit it. 

Mr. Kennedy, you have made many promises concerning your goals and ambitions for restructuring the federal health agencies. Recently, you said:

“FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma….” 

It is noteworthy that psychedelics is the first item on this list.

I understand that your son benefited greatly from a psychedelic experience after his mother’s passing, and you have discussed the topic at length on podcasts and interviews.

If you are, in fact, serious, and you have the president-elect’s support for rewriting the government’s relationship with psychedelics, please consider the following as logical and appropriately cautious steps that will support a flourishing in psychedelic science and innovation in mental health treatments.

1. Reclassify Psychedelics to Schedule III or IV

The major bureaucratic roadblock that impedes the advancement of psychedelic science is the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1971. 

Through this legislation, the federal illicit scheduling system was introduced. As you know, psychedelics and other promising neuroplastic compounds like MDMA are the most restricted classification, Schedule I. 

Schedule I compounds are defined as having a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.

This classification also creates significant barriers to research and limits the number of scientists who can work with these substances.

According to the CSA, the process for moving a compound out of Schedule I is through FDA approval. 

However, the Health and Human Services under the Biden-Harris administration has set a new precedent by recommending that cannabis, a Schedule I substance, be reclassified despite the absence of FDA approval. 

You have a golden opportunity to rewrite history and this should be a first step.

2. Expand the Federal Research Budget for Psychedelic Research 

From the early 1970s through 2021, there was no federal funding for psychedelic treatment research.

In 2021, Johns Hopkins University received a $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate the potential effects of psilocybin on tobacco addiction. This was described as the "first federal grant for psychedelic treatment research in 50 years."

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 authorized $10 million for clinical research on psychedelic treatments for military personnel.

Earlier this year, an $8.4 million grant application from the NIH was announced for the use of classical psychedelics in the treatment of chronic pain.

While these amounts represent a significant increase from previous years, they are still relatively small compared to the NIH’s annual budget of about $45 billion in fiscal year 2023.

While the scientific literature on psychedelics is very promising, and the positive experience of literally millions of people supports the use of psychedelics as therapeutics, it is still a very nascent and immature field of research primarily due to inadequate funding. 

Believe me, there is an abundance of interest, expertise, and open questions among researchers.

Federal funding for clinical trials of psychedelics is the lowest hanging fruit in advancing safe, rapid-acting, innovative treatment solutions for chronic diseases like depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, chronic pain, and even metabolic disease.

3. Expand FDA Remit for “Psychotherapeutic Adjuvants”

After the FDA rejected MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy for the treatment of PTSD, Tom Insel, the former Director of the National Institute for Mental Health, penned an op-ed in STAT News titled Adding psychotherapy to drug therapy works, but the FDA may not be able to handle it.

Insel wrote (emphasis added):

“One lesson from the “no” vote on MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD is that the U.S. regulatory system is not optimized for mental health care.

…I believe the key innovation here was the proposal to combine medication and psychotherapy as a bundled intervention. This combination was not convenient for the FDA or its advisory committee, but wasn’t it really a proposal for a best practice that needs to scale across mental health care? I believe this new drug application could serve as a wake-up call for new regulatory processes that would view psychological treatments as key facilitators rather than as confounders of behavioral change.”

The current FDA drug approval process requires demonstrating efficacy for specific medical conditions.

But not always.

Consider anesthesia. When the FDA evaluates an anesthetic agent, they don't ask, "Does it treat pain?" or "Does it cure a condition?" Instead, they ask, "Is it safe and effective at producing and maintaining the necessary state for surgery?"

This precedent is crucial because psychedelics operate in a similar way. 

Psychedelics create a temporary but profound shift in consciousness that, when properly supported, can catalyze deep therapeutic work.

I'm suggesting the creation of a new regulatory category: "Psychotherapeutic Adjuvants." 

An adjuvant is a substance added to a drug or therapy to enhance its effectiveness.

Such a framework would recognize these compounds for what they are—not traditional pharmaceuticals but rather sophisticated tools that, in the hands of trained therapists, can help people access extraordinary states of consciousness conducive to healing and personal growth.

This isn't just semantics—it's a paradigm shift that could dramatically accelerate research and development while ensuring appropriate safety standards. It would free researchers and clinicians to focus on developing proper protocols, training guidelines, and safety standards for working with these powerful tools.

4. Expand Right-to-Try Access for Terminal and Treatment-Resistant Patients

In 2018, Congress passed the Right-to-Try Act, acknowledging that people facing life-threatening conditions should be granted access to experimental treatment options before the FDA licenses them.

The cruel irony is that right now, someone with terminal cancer experiencing profound existential distress cannot legally access psilocybin therapy despite decades of research showing its potential to ease end-of-life anxiety. The same goes for veterans with treatment-resistant PTSD who've tried everything in our current medical toolbox without success.

This needs to change. 

Expanding the Right-to-Try to include psychedelic therapies isn't just compassionate—it's consistent with the law's original intent. We're talking about people who have either exhausted conventional treatments or face terminal diagnoses. They deserve the right to try these promising therapies in controlled, supported settings.

5. Establish a Veterans Affairs Psychedelic Research and Treatment Initiative

Mr. Trump, you've often spoken about your commitment to our veterans. Here's a concrete way to transform that commitment into action.

The VA system presents an extraordinary opportunity. It's the largest integrated healthcare system in America, with established protocols for mental health treatment and a population that desperately needs better solutions for PTSD, depression, and substance use disorders. We're talking about men and women who've served our country only to find themselves trapped in cycles of trauma that conventional treatments often fail to address.

What I'm proposing isn't just another research program—it's a comprehensive initiative that leverages the VA's unique strengths. Imagine dedicated centers of excellence where VA psychiatrists and therapists receive specialized training in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Picture a systematic approach to screening veterans for these treatments, delivering them in safe, supported settings, and providing crucial integration support afterward.

This isn't pie-in-the-sky thinking. The Defense Department has already recognized the potential here—that's why they've authorized $10 million for psychedelic research. But we need to think bigger. The VA, with its national reach and established infrastructure, could become the world leader in psychedelic medicine, developing protocols and best practices that could benefit not just veterans but, eventually, the broader population.

The path forward for psychedelic medicine requires bold yet measured steps that balance innovation with safety, scientific rigor, and compassionate access. 

These recommendations provide a framework for responsible reform that could fundamentally transform mental healthcare while maintaining appropriate safeguards.

You have a unique opportunity to correct decades of misguided drug policy that has stifled research and denied patients access to promising treatments. By implementing these changes, your administration could usher in a new mental health treatment era that honors scientific evidence and human dignity.

The time has come to move beyond the failed policies of the past and embrace the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. 

With proper oversight and careful implementation, these reforms could help address our nation's mental health crisis while establishing America as a leader in 21st-century medicine.

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Happy Halloween! 🎃

Welcome back to The Trip Report, a production of Beckley Waves.

In this episode, we’re joined by Lucia Huang, Co-Founder and CEO of Osmind, a mental health startup that seeks to transform psychiatry by supporting clinicians with a novel treatment and research platform that streamlines measurement-based care.

Measurement-based care in mental health is a clinical approach that relies on systematically tracking and analyzing patient-reported outcomes and objective data to guide treatment decisions.

In measurement-based care, symptoms, such as mood, sleep, and other physical health indicators, are monitored over time. This continuous feedback allows clinicians to personalize care, adjust treatments as needed, and make data-driven decisions to improve outcomes. However, streamlining this process has been a challenge. 

Osmind sees to make this process easier for the field of psychiatry as they adopt innovative treatments like Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Spravato, ketamine and other emerging tools.

In our conversation, we explore:

• The founding story of Osmind and the inspiration drawn from Lucia’s own life and career in healthcare

• How interventional psychiatry is poised to change the landscape of mental health treatment

• The promise and challenges of incorporating biomarkers and real-world evidence into psychiatric care

• And her vision for a future where psychiatry embraces precision medicine and autonomy for clinicians

And now, I bring you my conversation with Lucia Huang.

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We’re always looking for passionate individuals and organizations to collaborate.

If you're interested in joining us on this journey, please contact us to explore potential partnerships, investment, and consulting opportunities or to learn more about our work.

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Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney 

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves.

Today's conversation is with Shamil Chandaria, and as I alluded to in last week’s newsletter introducing computational neuroscience—it is the longest and most technical conversation we’ve had to date.

I have wanted to speak with Shamil since I watched his lecture at Oxford titled The Bayesian Brain and Meditation.

Shamil is a former advisor to Google DeepMind, co-foudner and research fellow at Imperial College London Centre for Psychedelic Research and Oxford University’s Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, and a co-author with Robin Carhart-Harris and the Imperial team of the influential 2023 paper titled Canalization and Plasticity in Psychopathology, 

Importantly for this conversation, Shamil is also a longtime meditation practitioner, and his current work is dedicated to exploring contemplative practices, spiritual awakening, and psychedelics through the lens of computational neuroscience. 

At the heart of the conversation is the Free Energy Principle, a relatively new concept in cognitive neuroscience that conceives of the brain as a prediction machine constantly updating its internal models to minimize prediction errors. This framework along with the Bayesian Brain Hypothesis show how the brain optimally processes sensory data through inference, which has profound implications for how we perceive and experience the world.

We discuss:

• The brain as a prediction machine

• The convergence of ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience.

• Defining human flourishing beyond the absence of suffering to include meaning, love, joy, connection, and psychological resilience.

• The role of body sensations, emotions, and somatic practices in psychotherapy and how they tie into the brain's predictive coding mechanisms.

• Spiritual awakening, liberation and human flourishing through a neurocomputational lens

• The potential for integrating free energy principle-based models into the field of psychiatry, improving therapeutic approaches and mental health care.

• And much more

My takeaway from this conversation is that we are, in fact, in the midst of a paradigm shift—one that bridges the fields of meditation, psychology, psychedelics, phenomenology, psychiatry, and even artificial intelligence. 

This new understanding, grounded in the free energy principle, offers a unified theory that links ancient wisdom with modern neuroscience, reshaping how we think about consciousness, well-being, and what it means to be sentient.

And now, I bring you my conversation with Shamil Chandaria.

I want to highlight our friends at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation (TBD), who have just announced their latest Request for Proposals for scientific studies of the Perception Box.

Tiny Blue Dot Foundation strives to help people understand that they live in their own unique Perception Box whose walls can be expanded to minimize suffering, increase acceptance of self and others, and view trauma and other challenges as opportunities for growth.

TBD has allocated $9,000,000 to fund up to 10 rigorous research projects related to The Science of the Perception Box. 

TBD ran similar RFPs over the last two years and funded a total of 23 projects thus far. Information about these projects can be found here and here.

Register and Apply!

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney 

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

I have wanted to speak with Shamil since I watched his lecture at Oxford on computational neuroscience and meditation, The Bayesian Brain and Meditation.

Since it is probably the most technical conversation we’ve had on the podcast, I want to lay the groundwork and cover the foundational idea and related concepts to help listeners digest the discussion.

This foundational idea is a novel and counterintuitive way of understanding the human brain and subjective experience that we’ll refer to as the Predictive Brain Hypothesis.

This model challenges the traditional idea that we passively perceive the world “as it is,” proposing instead that our brains actively construct our reality through predictions and comparisons with sensory data. By understanding how our brains predict and construct our reality, we can gain greater control over our experiences and move towards a state of flourishing.

Here are the key takeaways:

• The brain is a prediction machine: It constantly generates models of the world based on past experiences and uses these models to predict incoming sensory information.

• Our perception is an active construction: Rather than passively receiving information, our brains actively shape our experiences by comparing predictions with actual sensory data.

• Prediction errors drive learning: When predictions mismatch reality, the brain updates its models, leading to learning and adaptation.

• Meditation and psychedelics can recalibrate our predictive models: These practices can help us become aware of and potentially modify our ingrained patterns of thought and perception, leading to greater well-being.

• Understanding the predictive brain can improve mental health: This framework offers new insights into conditions like depression, anxiety, and PTSD, potentially leading to more effective therapies.

Before we get into this week’s dispatch, I want to highlight our friends at the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation (TBD), who have just announced their latest Request for Proposals for scientific studies of the Perception Box.

Tiny Blue Dot Foundation strives to help people understand that they live in their own unique Perception Box whose walls can be expanded to minimize suffering, increase acceptance of self and others, and view trauma and other challenges as opportunities for growth.

TBD has allocated $9,000,000 to fund up to 10 rigorous research projects related to The Science of the Perception Box. 

TBD ran similar RFPs over the last two years and has funded 23 projects thus far. Information about these projects can be found here and here.

Register and Apply

What is Experience?

The conventional way we understand our moment-to-moment experience is that we are perceiving a fixed, objective, immutable world.

It seems we experience the world as it is.

But consider the dress that broke the internet.

Is the dress above blue and black or white and gold?

In 2015, a seemingly simple photo of a dress went viral on social media, dividing the internet into two camps: those who saw it as blue and black and those who saw it as white and gold1. 

The phenomenon highlighted how our perception of color isn't solely determined by the wavelengths of light entering our eyes but also by how our brains interpret that information based on factors like lighting conditions and our unique, idiosyncratic experience.

Our brains constantly make predictions about the world around us, including the color of objects. In the case of the dress, the ambiguous lighting in the photo caused our brains to make different assumptions about the light source, leading to different color perceptions.

The dress is perhaps the most canonical example of how perception arises from a combination of incoming sensory data and each individual’s own idiosyncratic prediction of that information.

While the incoming sensory data is unchanged, it is the unique ways in which our brains—shaped through our own unique personal experiences—anticipate and render this incoming information that creates our conscious experience.

Another popular example is the ‘checker shadow illusion’ in which two squares on a checkerboard (labeled A and B) appear to be different shades of grey but are, in fact, the same color. 

When interpreting color, our brains take into account the surrounding context, including shadows and other visual cues. In this illusion, the shadow cast by the cylinder tricks our brains into perceiving square B as lighter than square A, even though they are identical.

While these are perhaps inconsequential optical illusions that may seem to have no bearing on our personal well-being, they point to the underlying neurocomputational processes that provide novel and compelling explanations for things like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, among others.

We often assume that our experience directly reflects an objective reality.

We believe we see the world “as it is.”

These illusions challenge this assumption. They demonstrate that our experience is not a passive reception of sensory information but an active construction by our brains. Our brains constantly predict what we will see, hear, and feel based on past experiences and current context. These predictions then influence our perception, shaping our moment-to-moment experience.

In other words, the brain is the organ of prediction.

The Brain is the Organ of Prediction

“Brains…are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with top-down expectations or predictions.”

—Andy Clark

The common assumption is that the eyes operate as cameras, capturing the visual scene of the world around you; the ears as microphones that pick up sound waves moving through the air; and sensory nerves throughout the body reliably report the sense of touch, etc.

This is the view of an old paradigm that recent neuroscience and psychology research has proven not just wrong but physically impossible.

Contrary to this popular belief, the world you experience—what you see, hear, feel, etc.—is not an accurate representation of objective reality as it really is. 

Rather, your experience is more like a controlled hallucination or simulation generated by a few pounds of wet meat, mostly fat, encased in the darkness of your skull.

Yes, of course, sensory information is received and propagated through a signal-processing apparatus in the nervous system in a bottom-up manner, but this is only half the story.

It is the fact that information flows in the other direction—top-down, from higher-level brain structures in anticipation of the bottom-up sensory information—that makes the matter of experience, perception, and sensation all the more fascinating and mysterious.

This top-down flow of information, commonly referred to as the brain’s Generative Model, is precisely that, a model generated by the brain that predicts the incoming sensory data, as well as the cause and significance based on the brain's understanding of the environment, context, and prior experiences.

The interplay between bottom-up sensory information and top-down predictions is key to understanding our subjective experience. This intricate dance between the world and our minds is a captivating area of scientific inquiry. It has profound implications for therapeutic practices like psychotherapy, meditation, and psychedelic-assisted therapy, offering clues as to why these methods sometimes succeed and sometimes fail.

Top-Down Predictions, Bottom-Up Sensory Data & Prediction Errors

“...the brain is an inference machine that actively predicts and explains its sensations. Central to this hypothesis is a probabilistic model that can generate predictions, against which sensory samples are tested to update beliefs about their causes”

—Prof Karl Friston

The top-down predictions (generative model) are based on prior experience about the cause and significance of incoming sensory input and are referred to as top-down because the model is stored in “higher brain levels,” such as the cortex—the most recently evolved part of the brain responsible for complex functions like perception, prediction, and decision-making.

These top-down predictions flow down to meet the incoming sensory information traveling bottom-up from our senses. Outside of our awareness, these two streams of information are constantly compared. 

If a prediction aligns with the incoming sensory data, it reinforces the brain's existing world model. However, if there's a mismatch—a prediction error—the brain revises its model to better reflect reality.

In other words, the generative model—the simulation created by our brain—is what we experience, and it is constantly revised as it receives and processes sensory input. Our perception isn't a passive reflection of the world, but an active construction, constantly refined through this predictive process.

Importantly, this system evolved not for perfect accuracy, but for survival. The brain prioritizes predictions that help us navigate our environment and respond effectively to potential threats, even if those predictions sometimes deviate from objective reality.

The Predictive Brain, Meditation & Psychedelics

“It turns out that a really important piece of the puzzle to make a prediction machine work well is that it learns that it's a prediction machine.”

—Mark Miller

Predictive brain dynamics can serve as a powerful framework for understanding the states of consciousness associated with meditation, spiritual awakening, and psychedelic experiences.

In this lens, practices like meditation and the responsible use of psychedelics afford us opportunities to observe and recalibrate the brain’s predictive models. 

In meditation, as practitioners cultivate awareness and equanimity, the predictive models begin to loosen their grip, revealing that much of what we experience—including thoughts, emotions, and even the sense of self—is constructed.

This de-reification of mental constructs may be akin to what many spiritual traditions refer to as the process of "awakening."

“Awakening” can be seen as the recognition of the fabricated nature of the generative model.

Instead of passively accepting reality as it is, one becomes lucid within the simulation, or as Shamil puts it, becoming lucid in the matrix—not escaping the model but realizing it’s a model and thus reducing the emotional reactivity tied to it.

Psychedelics, too, can act as a catalyst for this process, especially in their ability to dissolve rigid predictive models temporarily. 

This phenomenon is closely aligned with the "REBUS model," co-developed by Shamil and Robin Carhart-Harris, which posits that psychedelics reduce the precision of top-down predictions, creating an opportunity for bottom-up sensory data to reshape one's models of reality. 

Through both meditation and psychedelics, the brain can learn to update its generative models in ways that reduce suffering and enhance human flourishing. 

By embracing the realization that much of what we experience is a construction, we gain the ability to choose which stories we believe, which emotional responses to act on, and ultimately, how we wish to live.

In summary, the predictive brain model provides a compelling framework to bridge ancient contemplative practices and cutting-edge neuroscience, offering new pathways to understand and foster human flourishing through meditation, spiritual awakening, and psychedelics.

I am looking forward to sharing my conversation with Shamil with you all next week.

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Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves, a Psychedelic Venture Studio.

Over the past year, we’ve spoken with researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, and practitioners who are pioneering new paths in the world of psychedelics and mental health. 

After over thirty episodes of The Trip Report Podcast, I figured it was time to give a peek behind the scenes of Beckley Waves and our work to support the developing field.

To that end, today, I am speaking with Rock Feilding-Mellen, a co-founder and partner at Beckley Waves.

In this episode, we’ll pull back the curtain on our ongoing projects, the ups and downs of building in a young and misunderstood industry, and the vision that drives our work to create meaningful change in this emerging field.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Amanda Feilding and her pioneering work to support psychedelic science and drug policy reform through the Beckley Foundation

• The origin story of Beckley Waves and its mission to develop a new paradigm of care delivery in the field of psychedelics.

• Rock's personal journey with psychedelic-assisted therapy and how it shaped his vision for integrating these practices into mainstream healthcare.

• The crucial role of supportive care in psychedelic therapy, emphasizing the importance of preparation, integration, and ongoing support.

• The Beckley Waves family of companies including Beckley Retreats, Beckley Academy, and the recent acquisition of Nue Life.

• The challenges and opportunities of building care delivery infrastructure for a future that includes psychedelics as a key tool for healing and thriving.

And now, I bring you my conversation with Rock Feilding-Mellen.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney 

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Over the last few months, we’ve been exploring the hypothetical clinic of the future, focusing on how emerging treatment modalities like psychedelics, transcranial-focused ultrasound, metabolic therapies, and relational practices can synergistically improve mental health care.

We've proposed four categories for these innovative approaches:

• Relational: Emphasizing the therapeutic relationship between clinicians, therapists, and patients, fostering social connections and community support.

• Experiential: Utilizing interventions that induce altered states of consciousness, such as psychedelic-assisted therapy, to facilitate profound personal shifts as well as sensory stimulation from programmatic light, sound, and haptic technologies.

• Energetic: Neuromodulation tools like transcranial-focused ultrasound stimulate neural tissue and optimize brain activity directly.

• Metabolic: Leveraging the connection between metabolic processes and mental well-being, such as through ketogenic diets, to address the physiological roots of mental health conditions.

Our central thesis is that the pinnacle of care will be a multimodal, collaborative, and holistic combination of two or more categories.

Today, I want to explore two ways these things can be combined and close out this series with some thoughts on a potential failure mode of “holistic” care.

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The Potential of Combined Therapies

It is unlikely that providers and clinics will specialize in all of these specific approaches, and future clinics might specialize in particular combinations of these modalities.

For example, Greenbrook TMS delivers transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and Spravato (esketamine) at more than one hundred clinics around North America.

Future clinics will deliver many permutations of the emergent treatment technologies; below are a few hypotheticals.

Relational-Experiential-Metabolic

The ketogenic diet is an intervention that shows incredible promise for severe mental illnesses.

In May, researchers published a case series titled Complete Remission of Depression and Anxiety using a ketogenic diet: case series. The authors note:

“Complete remission of major depression and generalized anxiety disorder occurred within 7–12 weeks of therapeutic nutritional ketosis during treatment with a personalized animal-based ketogenic diet in adults with complex comorbid depression and anxiety engaged in a specialized metabolic psychiatry program.”

However, adopting a ketogenic diet can be challenging due to its significant departure from conventional eating habits and the emotional complexities surrounding food. This is where the synergy of multiple therapeutic modalities can be transformative.

Imagine a patient embarking on the following journey:

• Experiential: They begin with a course of psychedelic-assisted somatic psychotherapy. This experience allows them to explore their relationship with food, their body, and the underlying emotional patterns driving their dietary choices.

• Relational: Following psychedelic therapy, they join a professionally led integration group, connecting with others who share similar goals. This supportive environment fosters accountability and encourages the development of new, healthier habits.

• Metabolic: Empowered by the insights from the psychedelic experience and supported by their peers, they adopt a ketogenic diet under professional guidance. The integration group provides ongoing support and encouragement, facilitating long-term adherence to the dietary changes.

This integrated approach addresses the multifaceted nature of mental health, combining the transformative potential of psychedelic therapy with the supportive power of group dynamics and the physiological benefits of a ketogenic diet.

By weaving together experiential, relational, and metabolic interventions, we can create a synergistic pathway towards healing and reducing suffering. 

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Multimodal Sensory Simulation

One of the most exciting—and simplest—recent findings in neuroscience and psychology concerns the importance of sensory processing in mental health and the role of programmatic sensory stimulation, such as light, sound, haptics, and thermal stress, in enhancing this neural process.

Sensory processing refers to the nervous system’s ability to reliably receive, interpret, and respond to sensory information from both the external and internal environment.

And as we noted in Part I, “Nearly all of the difficult-to-treat mental health conditions are predicated on disruption or miscalibration of the nervous system’s ability to perceive and assign threat value to incoming sensory information.”

In response to early life trauma and prolonged periods of stress, it is common for the brain to shunt metabolic energy away from the sensory pathways as an adaptive survival response because so much emotional sensation from these periods is too overwhelming.

As a result, trauma and prolonged stress lead to a disconnected or disembodied state.

This diminished capacity to feel sets the stage for depression, anxiety, addiction, and compulsive behavior.

In their book Better in Every Sense, University of Toronto researchers Norman Farb and Zindel Siegel describe it this way:

“…despite how plausible it seems that blocking out sensation would reduce sadness, the participants who blocked out sensation did not report feeling less sad in the moment—it’s just that their sadness had become a type of expectation, concept, or thing, rather than a living, embodied experience….

Our most depressed participants had somehow learned to regulate their feelings away, an understandable reaction to being continually exposed to stress, loss, and harsh internal judgments. Yet because physical sensations are the building blocks of emotion, the more a person shut out the feeling of what was happening in their bodies, the less they could experience any emotion.”

Emerging research supports the use of programmatic light, sound, haptic stimulation, and even thermal stimuli for strengthening sensory pathways.

In a paper titled An Active Inference Approach to Interoceptive Psychopathology, the authors posit:

If the body is the nexus by which therapies can directly alter interoceptive states, then it follows that body-based therapies should provide a more direct entry point by which to manipulate the interoceptive system and correct somatic error. 

Again from Norman Farb and Zindel Siegal:

This is precisely why rebuilding sensory pathways is so transformative. Because attention is a limited resource, a powerful way to break down a dominant narrative or worldview is to starve it of those attentional resources. A simple way to do this is to attend to elements of experience that are not already bound up in this worldview—every moment of attending to a sensation that is not obviously relevant is a moment of taking resources away from the story we tell and re-engaging with the unknown. 

In other words, the body not only keeps the score but also calls the shots that keep us locked in rumination, worry, and pain patterns.

Sensory stimulation through light, sound, haptics, or thermal stimuli can help re-engage these pathways, leading to a more accurate perception of the present moment and promoting a sense of embodiment.

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Kitchen Sink vs. Silver Bullet 

Finally, while these emerging technologies and innovations portend an exciting and promising departure from the current paradigm, they are not without potential pitfalls and points of failure.

A particular failure mode for this kind of holistic thinking I refer to as the ‘Kitchen Sink’ problem and it has plagued integrative/holistic health practices for as long they have existed. 

Let’s imagine a future clinic replete with infrastructure, staff, and treatments we’ve been discussing: psychedelic-assisted therapy, transcranial-focused ultrasound, closed-loop multimodal neurofeedback, metabolic therapy, etc. 

How do we direct patients to the most optimal treatment for them?

Throwing the proverbial ‘kitchen sink’ at each patient is neither feasible nor good practice.

Not everyone will respond to these treatments; they may pose risks for some. For each individual, there will be an optimal “entry point” that will vary depending on their current situation, preferences, medical history, etc.

To my mind, the role of the clinic of the future then is not only to offer these treatments but to elucidate a method for identifying the optimal treatment path for each person.

With this advent of innovation, distinguishing between patients who would benefit from experiential interventions (e.g., psychedelic-assisted therapy) versus those who might need metabolic therapies or neuromodulation will be crucial.

Developing robust assessment tools that can identify the most appropriate therapeutic entry point for each patient through evaluation of the patient’s physical, psychological, and social history is crucial to tailoring a treatment plan.

Of course, any personalized assessment will rely on technologies based on patient-specific biomarkers, genetic information, symptom patterns, and even lifestyle factors. This data-centric approach can guide clinicians in avoiding the overuse of therapies, thus minimizing the ‘kitchen sink’ approach.

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves, a Psychedelic Venture Studio.

Today, I am speaking with Dr. Rachelle Sampson and Dr. Bennet Zelner, the primary investigators of The Connected Leadership Study.

Rachelle and Bennet are both faculty at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland and share a deep interest in how psychedelics might catalyze systems change in leadership and business organizations.

Rachelle’s career began as a corporate attorney, but she soon pivoted and earned her PhD in business economics, focusing on environmental sustainability and corporate strategy. 

Bennett, on the other hand, began his career studying traditional economics, but his work felt increasingly disconnected from real-world applications. In psychedelic circles, Bennett is known for the Pollination Approach— a model for delivering psychedelic-assisted mental healthcare that draws inspiration from ecological principles.

Together, Rachelle and Bennett are exploring how psychedelics can impact leadership decisions and foster deeper alignment with more sustainable and regenerative business practices.

In this conversation that took place in July, we discuss:

• How psychedelics sparked both Rachelle and Bennett’s interest in systems change.

• The challenges and potential of integrating psychedelics into leadership development.

• Their ongoing research in the Connected Leadership Study, examining how psychedelics influence decision-making, creativity, and leadership.

• Insights from their pilot cohort of leaders who participated in a psilocybin retreat.

• And much more.

And now, I bring you my conversation with Rachelle Sampson and Bennett Zelner.

Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney 

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

Despite the many issues that appeal to voters, the phrase captured the singular issue that would give Clinton the win.

Similarly, when considering the multitude of factors contributing to an individual’s psychological, emotional, and physical health and well-being, a singular input—that has become disastrous—has an overwhelmingly outsized impact on the health of the whole organism.

It’s the food, stupid!

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In Part V of this series on The Clinic of the Future, we’ll examine the critical role of metabolic function in mental health, emphasizing the somehow overlooked aspect of food in the modern healthcare system.

As a refresher, I posit that future treatment paradigms will include four domains: Relational, Experiential, Energetic, and Metabolic.

Today, we’re looking at the Metabolic.

The emerging evidence that the most common constituents of the modern diet are actively pathological is too great to ignore. It will soon be apparent that any treatment approach to mental health and wellbeing that does not include a nutritional plan will be insufficient.

It’s The Food Stupid!

Here’s where we’re heading;

• Evolution shaped our biology in response to intermittent access to nutrient-dense foods.   

• The modern diet, the Standard American Diet (SAD), is riddled with nutrient-poor, calorie-rich, processed sugars, carbs and fats.   

• The SAD leads to inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance—pathological states that involve the mitochondria and are the root causes of nearly all chronic diseases, including mental illnesses.   

• Metabolic psychiatry aims to address mental illness at its origin: food.

The Evolutionary Lens

Any rigorous analysis of modern health and disease patterns must consider an evolutionary lens. 

One way to do this is to examine how different our modern lifestyle is from the environment in which our species evolved.

Humans evolved in small, close-knit, nomadic tribes where food access was uncertain and demanded constant effort. This formative period of about 300,000 years shaped our biology, which remains essentially unchanged today.

However, our current environment differs dramatically from that ancestral one. Two fundamental changes are particularly significant: the composition of our food and the ease with which we can access it.

Our ancestors’ diet consisted solely of plants and animals they had to hunt, gather, and forage. They expended energy to acquire energy. This resulted in a metabolism that evolved to use specific food components—primarily fiber, protein, and fat—for energy, tissue building, and maintenance.

Additionally, our ancestors faced regular periods of food scarcity, likely even experiencing prolonged fasting more often than not. This shaped our metabolic flexibility and ability to cope with limited food availability.

Now, compare this food environment of natural scarcity to our current food environment of synthetic hyperabundance, built on readily available, highly processed, nutrient-poor, additive-laden refined sugars, simple carbohydrates, and inflammatory fats. 

Comparing the stark differences between our ancestral food environment and our modern one offers a powerful insight: the food we eat today may play a significant role in our current health state, as depicted in the graph.

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SAD in America

While the Neolithic Revolution—also known as the Agricultural Revolution, which began in the Middle East 10,000 to 12,000 years ago—marked the beginning of our dietary shift, it was the Industrial Revolution that truly accelerated the evolution of our food system.

The introduction of petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides, farm mechanization, and industrial food processing led to a dramatic departure from our evolutionary diet.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the refinement of scalable and profitable food production techniques led the Western diet to diverge from its evolutionary roots significantly.

While the Industrial Revolution began in England, the impact on the American food system was more pronounced. This can be attributed to two primary factors: 

• Government subsidies, meant to ensure a stable food supply, incentivized the production of corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice over fruit and vegetables, and

• The adoption of aggressive marketing strategies by food companies, mirroring tactics previously used by the tobacco industry.

The industrialization of our food system has led to a troubling reality: over 60% of the food consumed in America today is calorie-rich but nutrient-poor, consisting of industrially processed artificial sugars, carbs, and fats.

This shift towards processed foods is driven by their longer shelf life and higher profit margins, prioritizing commercial interests over nutritional value.

The consequences of this dietary landscape are dire, manifesting primarily in three ways:

• Chronic inflammation

• Oxidative stress

• Insulin resistance. 

Specifically, this phenotype overwhelms our mitochondria, an oft-overlooked cellular organelle that emerging research implicates in nearly all chronic diseases, including diabetes, obesity, heart disease, cancers, and mental illnesses.

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Metabolic Health Is Mitochondrial Health; Mitochondrial Health Is Mental Health

Mitochondria are far more than just energy producers.

They are vital communication hubs that orchestrate cellular function, including gene expression in response to various stressors.

This influence extends beyond energy metabolism, affecting cellular health, stress responses, and disease development.

In This is Your Mitochondria on Psychedelics, we noted:

Perhaps, the most interesting and “paradigmy” is the research that shows how mitochondria serve as a crucial interface between the genome and the environment and orchestrating gene expression in response to stress, external stimuli and internal demands.

We might even say that, in addition to the “powerhouse of the cell,” mitochondria are also the “central processing units of the cell.”

As regulators of gene expression, mitochondria influence not only the cellular response to stress and injury but also the maintenance of cellular health and the development of disease. 

Through complex signaling pathways, mitochondria communicate with the nucleus to regulate the activity of genes, effectively serving as conductors in the symphony of cellular life.

This orchestration ensures that the cell adapts efficiently to changes, protects against stress, and mediates repair mechanisms.

With regards to the mitochondria’s role in mental illness, in a paper titled Stress and Psychiatric Disorders: The Role of Mitochondria, the authors  note: 

“The mitochondrion, well-known for its role in cellular energy production, represents a critical nexus of biological, psychological, and social factors that underlie the mechanisms and consequences of the stress response. Psychosocial factors impact biological processes through physiological systems that are highly integrated with mitochondrial functioning.”

While the emerging field of metabolic psychiatry is often equated with low-carb or ketogenic diets, their true value lies in altering the fundamental environment of mitochondria.

By changing their energy source and surrounding conditions, these dietary interventions can profoundly influence cellular function and health.

The modern food environment, dominated by industrially processed sugar, carbs, and unhealthy fats, is far from the food we evolved with. 

This has led to a surge in metabolic dysfunction, which in turn fuels a multitude of chronic diseases, including mental health disorders. 

The emerging field of metabolic psychiatry highlights the critical connection between food, metabolism, and mental well-being, offering hope for a more comprehensive approach to healthcare in the future. 

By addressing the root causes of metabolic dysfunction, we can potentially not only improve physical health but also alleviate the burden of mental illness. 

The message is clear: it’s the food, stupid!

Welcome back to The Trip Report Podcast, a production of Beckley Waves, a Psychedelic Venture Studio.

Today’s conversation is a unique one as I am speaking with Rebecca Kronman, a licensed therapist and the founder of Plant Parenthood, a digital community exploring the intersection of psychedelics and family life.

Rebecca and Plant Parenthood have been at the forefront of conversations about plant medicines and psychedelics in a family context—something that might seem controversial at first glance. However, the work is rooted in providing a safe, non-stigmatized space for parents to explore these topics as they look for alternative solutions to complex family dynamics, mental health struggles, and personal healing.

During our conversation, we explore:

• The rise of psychedelics in parenting, including how Rebecca has seen these tools impact family systems.

• The potential therapeutic use of psychedelics with children, and how this reflects global cultural practices.

• The importance of set and setting, especially for adolescents, and how Rebecca’s work is helping to build education and support systems for families engaging with these substances.

If you’re a parent or simply curious about how psychedelics are reshaping conversations about family, mental health, and community, this episode is for you.

And now, here’s my conversation with Rebecca Kronman.

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Listen to the episode on Substack, Spotify, Google or Apple.

Credits:

• Hosted by Zach Haigney 

• Produced by Zach Haigney, Erin Greenhouse, and Katelin Jabbari

• Find us at thetripreport.com

• Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube

Theme music by MANCHO Sounds, Mixed and Mastered by Rollin Weary

As a close observer/participant, it is humbling to have not hedged my intuitions differently. So, I want to quickly share my learning and the update to my model so that perhaps you can, too.

1. Question Claims and Seek a Greater Understanding of Risk

   1. I should have pressed Rick during our conversation for the podcast about the potential points of failure of promising progress markers like Breakthrough Therapy Designation and Special Protocol Assessment. 

   2. I wish I had recognized that a Non-Directed, Transpersonal-inspired therapeutic modality with no scientific track record would be an issue for an ostensibly evidenced-based process.

2. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Narratives

   1. Based on rumors of allegations—rather than actual allegations—both the ICER Committee and FDA Advisory Committee had no choice but to assume that sexual misconduct extended beyond the well-documented, reported, and acknowledged case of sexual abuse by study therapist Richard Yensen.

3. The Overton Window1 is Opaque

   1. Studying the ‘psychedelic renaissance’ is a great example of the relationship between scientific progress/innovation and the friction of social inertia (regulation, cultural perception, adoption, etc.). The view from inside the bubble is not the view from outside the bubble—I thought psychedelics had made more cultural and political progress than they have2.

As a matter of cultural adoption, scientific inquiry, and clinical application, psychedelics are still extremely promising; however, ‘The Last Mile’ will be longer than expected.

I’m curious if this resonates with readers. Let me know what you think in the comments or by replying to this email.

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Before the FDA decision, I had been brainstorming ideas for a series I am calling The Clinic of the Future, which orients promising, emergent treatments and frameworks according to four domains:

• Relational: the intentional and supportive relationship with clinicians, therapists, family, peers, community, and network.

• Experiential: interventions and practices that create acute subjective and sensate experiences that catalyze systemwide updates (altered states, exposure therapy, thermal therapy, schema surgery, etc.).

• Energetic: the growing number of neuromodulation tools that stimulate neural tissue (brain, vagus nerve, peripheral nerves, etc.) with a precise dosage of energy (i.e., transcranial-focused ultrasound).

• Metabolic: the innate connection between metabolic processes and subjective well-being (i.e., ketogenic therapy for psychiatric conditions).

My thesis is that the pinnacle of care will be a multimodal, collaborative, and holistic combination of two or more categories.

In Part II & III, we covered the Relational and Experiential domains. 

Today, we’ll look at the Energetic.

Emergent Neurotechnology

Some of you will be disgusted by how I use the term ‘energetic’ and I don’t blame you.  

Not Qi, Prana, life force, or inner healing intelligence…but Neurostimulation. 

In another dispatch, I’ll explain why I think Qi, Prana, etc., are better situated in the ‘Experiential’ or ‘Relational’ categories and why ‘entropy’ is probably a better word than ‘energy’ for what these ancient concepts are pointing to and how we can integrate them into modern practice. To be sure, I am not castigating these terms as nonsense as many do (quite the opposite).

But for now, let’s focus on neurostimulation.

From Wikipedia:

Neurostimulation refers to the purposeful modulation of nervous system activity using invasive or non-invasive means to deliver electrical, magnetic, or other forms of energy to specific neural targets.

The field of neurotechnology is undergoing an inflection point as new techniques move from the lab to clinical trials and clinics.

Techniques like Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Deep Brain Stimulation, Spinal Cord Stimulators, and Peripheral Nerve Stimulators have been around for a while but the new developments are particularly promising.

While most of the attention, fascination, and trepidation has been with invasive approaches—most notably Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) from Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company—here, I want to focus on another emergent technology that feels more clinically realistic and promising—a non-invasive approach called Transcranial Focused Ultrasound (tFUS).

Transcranial Focused Ultrasound

tFUS is a non-invasive form of neurostimulation that uses ultrasound waves to target tissue deep within the brain.

As the name suggests, the procedure involves passing ultrasound waves through the skull to reach specific brain regions to modulate neural activity.

Unlike traditional ultrasound, which has been used as an imaging tool for decades, tFUS focuses ultrasound waves to a precise point, allowing for targeted stimulation.

The result of this stimulation is the controlled modulation of neural activity in a specific region of the brain, an intervention that is proving beneficial for several stubborn conditions like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s as well as several psychiatric conditions.

Here is a picture of what the procedure looks like from the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Research website:

TMS vs. tFUS

The proposed critical advantages of tFUS compared to other brain stimulation modalities like transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) include:

• Spatial resolution

• Depth of penetration 

• The ability for a technician to ‘steer’ the treatment.

TMS has a relatively low spatial resolution, making it difficult to selectively target small, discrete brain areas. Conversely, tFUS can achieve millimeter-level precision in targeting specific brain regions, allowing for more focused and localized stimulation. The high spatial precision of tFUS enables more targeted neuromodulation, potentially leading to more effective therapeutic outcomes.

Where TMS is limited in its ability to reach deeper structures due to the rapid attenuation of the magnetic field, tFUS can reach deeper brain regions, thereby opening up the possibility of targeting more therapeutic targets, including those involved in conditions like addiction, depression, and neurodegeneration.

With TMS, targeting a different brain region typically requires changing the equipment, which is a time-consuming and labor-intensive inconvenience. The emerging tFUS devices can steer the ultrasound beam to target different brain regions in real-time without physical hardware changes.

Psychedelic Parallels

Also interesting are several parallels between this class of neurotechnology and psychedelic therapies.

Scientific Roots in the 1950s 

Both tFUS and psychedelic therapies have a long history of research and exploration, even though they are now emerging as novel therapeutic approaches.

The fundamental principles behind tFUS, such as using ultrasound for neural modulation, were first discovered in the 1950s, but the field languished for decades before being rediscovered and advanced in the 2000s. Similarly, the therapeutic potential of psychedelics has been known for a long time, with research dating back to the 1950s. Still, their study was suppressed and stigmatized until the recent resurgence of interest.

New Treatment Paradigms

Both tFUS and psychedelic therapies represent a significant shift away from the dominant pharmaceutical model of treating neurological and psychiatric conditions.

Instead of relying on chronic drug administration, these approaches aim to induce lasting changes in brain function and behavior through targeted interventions. This shift challenges the traditional medical paradigm and offers a new paradigm for how we treat these complex conditions.

Harnessing Neuroplasticity

A key aspect of both tFUS and psychedelic therapies is their ability to harness the brain's natural capacity for neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to adapt and change in response to experience.

By modulating neural activity and connectivity, these interventions can potentially facilitate the formation of new neural pathways and the reorganization of brain networks, leading to long-term therapeutic effects. This plasticity-enhancing mechanism departs from the static, symptom-management approach of many conventional treatments.

Clinical Infrastructure Requirements

Effectively implementing both tFUS and psychedelic therapies requires the development of specialized clinical infrastructure and therapeutic support systems.

These interventions are not simple “take a pill and go” treatments but rather involve complex procedures, patient monitoring, and integration of the therapeutic experience. Clinicians, therapists, and other healthcare providers will need to be trained and equipped to deliver these novel treatments safely and effectively.

Challenges and Future Directions

Despite its promising potential, tFUS is still mainly in the research and development phase. It will face several critical challenges before being widely adopted in clinical settings.

Regulatory Hurdles

One of the primary obstacles is obtaining FDA clearance. The regulatory landscape for tFUS devices is uncertain as a new treatment approach. It is likely to be classified as a new class of medical devices, requiring more regulatory scrutiny than another TMS device and more extensive clinical trials to establish safety, efficacy, and long-term outcomes.

Technical Challenges

Substantial technical challenges must also be overcome. One major hurdle is precisely targeting through the skull, for instance.

While tFUS offers superior spatial resolution and depth of penetration compared to other neurostimulation modalities, achieving consistent and accurate targeting across diverse patient populations—considering variations in skull thickness and shape—remains a significant technical challenge. Moreover, researchers are still working to understand the optimal pulse parameters and the full range of effects that tFUS can induce in the brain.

Another crucial consideration is the durability of therapeutic effects. While preliminary studies show promising results, the long-term efficacy of tFUS in treating chronic neurological and psychiatric conditions remains to be fully established.

Integrating tFUS with Other Therapies

Looking forward, one of the most exciting possibilities is the integration of tFUS with other therapeutic modalities.

Combining tFUS with psychedelic therapies, for example, could potentially amplify the neuromodulatory effects of both treatments, leading to more profound and enduring changes in brain function.

Similarly, pairing tFUS with psychotherapy might enhance the ability to rewire maladaptive neural circuits, providing a more holistic approach to treating complex conditions like depression, addiction, or PTSD.

While tFUS is a promising and versatile technology with the potential to revolutionize non-invasive brain stimulation, it is still in the early stages of development. Significant research, technological refinement, and clinical trials are required to fully realize its potential. If these challenges can be met, tFUS could become a cornerstone of future therapeutic strategies and clinics.