In this Drug Science webinar, Dr Balázs Szigeti explains the current science of microdosing as he presents the results from his self-blinded microdosing research, the largest placebo-controlled microdosing study in the world! Dr Szigeti also explains how participants created their microdoses with a placebo control as part of the revolutionary methodology he developed to reduce costs and avoid the restrictions often imposed on psychedelic research.
Microdosing has exploded in popularity in recent years, with proponents claiming enhanced creativity and cognitive ability. But psychedelic research is an extremely niche area of study, and within that niche, microdosing is extremely under-studied. It is difficult to draw conclusions from the handful of microdosing studies that have been published. Thankfully, Dr Szigeti’s study has significantly expanded the knowledge base and is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to microdosing. Here, he explains his findings.
Balázs Szigeti has a degree in mathematical physics from Imperial College London and earned a PhD in computational neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh. For his PhD he developed a machine learning pipeline for the behavioral classification of Caenorhabditis elegans. Balazs was also involved with the OpenWorm project, an open science project dedicated to create a biophysical simulation of C. Elegans’ nervous system. After graduating, he spent a few years as a biomedical software engineer at the Icahn Institute of Genetics in New York to create tools for whole cell modeling.
He collaborated with the Global Drug Survey to show that neuroimaging studies consistently overestimate the harm of recreational MDMA use. Recently he invented ‘self-blinding‘, a novel methodology that enables self-experimenters to incorporate placebo control into their experimentation without clinical supervision. Using this methodology, Balázs designed and lead the self-blinding microdose study, the largest placebo controlled study on psychedelics in the world.
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