The Current State of Knowledge on How Psychedelics Impact Memory

Abstract

How psychedelics impact memory is crucial to understanding their therapeutic mechanisms and potential harms, given what is taken from a psychedelic experience (a memory) may have a persisting functional impact. Memory is not a monolith, with various interacting systems such as episodic memory, fear conditioning/extinction, and reward learning. Moreover, drugs differentially impact the formation (encoding), post-encoding stabilization (consolidation), and access (retrieval) of memories. In this talk, I will first discuss how psychedelics impact the encoding, consolidation, and retrieval of episodic memories, with particularly unique effects on encoding. Specifically, psychedelics acutely impair hippocampal-dependent encoding while enhancing cortical-dependent encoding. The acute effects of psychedelics may also enhance fear extinction learning. Finally, psychedelics may enhance reward learning and learning from reward omission, particularly during the acute and post-acute effects, respectively. Together, these findings allude to therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics, as well as cases in which rigid learning can go awry (e.g., false insights).

Biography

Dr. Manoj Doss is a cognitive neuropsychopharmacologist in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and the McGill Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy at The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School. Dr. Doss is broadly interested in the acute and persisting effects of psychoactive drugs on cognition and brain function with focuses on hallucinogens and episodic memory. He utilizes complex cognitive paradigms, neuroimaging, and computational modeling to explore what makes 5-HT2A psychedelics unique compared to other classes of psychoactive drugs in terms of their basic effects and their therapeutic mechanisms.