Atlanta Georgia’s Emory University has developed an innovative mobile app that will be used to measure the efficacy of magic mushroom therapy in a novel way.
“Fabla,” developed by a team of experts from the institution’s AppHatchery initiative, is the centre of an upcoming study regarding the impact of psilocybin on people suffering from depression.
The software will measure characteristics of their verbal responses like tone, pitch and word selection to help judge whether or not the psychedelic mushrooms are beneficial post-administration. They call these “speech biomarkers.”
“By allowing researchers and clinicians to ask questions participants answer aloud, we can capture markers of mental health contained in speech that reveal more than written words alone.”
Recruitment for the “OPTIMIZE” study (An Investigation of Strategies to Understand and Optimize the Antidepressant Effects of Psilocybin) will begin next month. The school plans to enrol 141 people in the clinical trial, which will be hosted at a healthcare centre in Colorado. These subjects will use the app for two weeks before the therapy sessions begin and for six weeks afterwards.
“Rather than simply asking if someone feels ‘better,’ we’re examining how their internal dialogue changes,” Fabla creator Deanna Kaplan said in an announcement from Emory.
Imperial College London is the only other notable research institute to integrate speech analysis into a psilocybin depression study. This British school published its assessment in the Journal of Affective Disorders In 2018.
Read more: Taking psilocybin or LSD can lessen frequency of severe headaches by 25%
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Emory launched a spiritual psychedelics centre in 2022
Like many others, the resurgence of interest in entheogenic substances prompted the university to dedicate its own entity to their study a few years ago.
The Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, situated within Emory’s Brain Health Center, claims to be distinct because of its focus on how spirituality and science intersect. It has an extensive collection of research material on plant medicines and other enlightening topics.
“Foremost in our work is to advance ethical standards, usher cultural epistemology, be responsible to a psychospiritual model, and to make accessible healing pathways to diverse populations,” the school described.
In October, Emory hosted a podcast episode on psychedelics featuring the OPTIMIZE study’s principal investigator Roman Palitsky.
“Scientific interest in psychedelics as possible therapeutics began in the early 20th century but waned once the government classified substances like LSD and MDMA as illegal and highly restricted,” the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory, responsible for putting the talk show together, said. “Today, psychedelics are gaining traction again due to research that highlights their potential therapeutic benefits for mental health conditions like depression and PTSD.”
rowan@mugglehead.com
