Location:

Anatomy Building, JZ Young Lecture Theatre G29

Medical Sciences and Anatomy Building, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

Zoom Link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/99342982623

Abstract:

Drawing from the extensive data of the Great British Intelligence Test (GBIT) which recruited more than 500k participants between 2019-2020, we explore the cognitive ramifications of recreational drug use including those of psychedelic use. Notably, a substantial portion (over a quarter) of the initial cohort returned for repeated assessments at six-month intervals over four years, providing a longitudinal dataset. In this design, a range of cognitive abilities such as memory, attention, reasoning, and language were measured at regular intervals with our bespoke cognitive testing platform, the Cognitron. Advanced machine learning techniques were used to perform data-driven clustering based on patterns of drug use, then to offer detailed insights into the cognitive profiles associated with those patterns. The study's structure was designed to reduce self-selection bias characteristic to online surveys, as participants were initially unaware that psychedelic use would be investigated, thus bolstering the ecological validity of the findings. This talk will discuss these results and place them within the broader scientific and public dialogue on psychedelics.

Bio: 

Maria Bălăeţ is a computational neuroscientist at Imperial College London, specialising in neurodegeneration, sleep, and recreational drug use, particularly psychedelics. She employs large-scale cognitive testing and AI algorithms to study cognitive variations in individuals with neurological or psychiatric conditions, or who use drugs recreationally. Recently, she led a segment of the Great British Intelligence Test, examining the effects of recreational drug use in the UK, with a particular focus on cognitive and mental health effects. Beyond research, she is an active science communicator, having delivered dozens of lectures across the UK and abroad on psychedelics and harm reduction. For updates follow her on Twitter @emmsskyyy.