The Mix Tape: Ep. 5 — Psychedelics in Medicine

Unison:
Welcome to The Mix Tape.

Natalie Taylor:

I’m Natalie.

Valerie McCandlish:

And I’m Valerie. And before we kick off this week’s episode, I have something very serious to share, and that’s a big fact check from our conversation with Sarah and Brody, where I very confidently and incorrectly said last week that It Takes Two by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock is not from the 80s because it actually very much is. It was released in 1988 and is absolutely fitting for Brody’s mix tape. So I would like to formally apologize to Rob Base, DJ E-Z Rock and all of our listeners who might’ve been cursing my name last week as they listened to me make that statement.

Natalie Taylor:

It’s okay. It’s okay, Val. I was with you. I thought for sure it was later than the 80s, so it’s all good.

Valerie McCandlish:

Yeah. We’re just having fun on The Mix Tape.

Natalie Taylor:

We’re having fun. Yeah. But we do have more fun in store for you today because we’re going international. Get your passports. We’re headed on a trip. Today, our guest joins us from Switzerland and we are so grateful to have her on the podcast. Dr. Katrin Preller is joining our client solutions lead for executive search, Jocelyn Scott, to discuss psyche and mental health. So without further ado, here’s Jocelyn and Katrin.

Jocelyn Scott:

Hello. I am Jocelyn Scott. Here at Mix Talent, I’m a client solutions director specific to retained executive search. One of the things I most appreciate about my job as the opportunity to connect with and learn from really fascinating people doing ground breaking work in life sciences. Today’s guest is definitely representative of that. I’m excited to introduce Dr. Katrin Preller. And I want to discuss what she’s uncovered through her work with psychedelics research and the potential for breakthroughs in mental health treatment. So let me start with the introduction.

Jocelyn Scott:

Katrin received her masters in science in neuropsychology and clinical psychology from the University of Constance in Germany. She then completed her PhD at the University of Zurich, investigating the effects of psychedelics on self perception and social cognition at the Neuropsychopharmacology and Brain Imaging Lab. Katrin was appointed as a junior group leader at the University of Zurich and she holds a position as a visiting assistant professor at Yale University. Dr. Preller is a recipient of the Pfizer Research Reward and the Swiss Society for Biological Psychiatry Young Investigators Award. Her group’s research focus is centered on the neurobiology and pharmacology of cognitive and emotional processes in health and disease. Also, the development of novel treatment approaches and the interaction between pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments. Welcome Katrin. Thank you for joining us here on The Mix Tape.

Katrin Preller:

Thank you so much for the invitation. I am super excited to be here and I’m really looking forward to our conversation today.

Jocelyn Scott:

I am too. I think there’s a lot of folks across our organization who are excited about this. Once we delved into this space, there was interest across our organization and then I’ve noticed increased client interest in this exact space and getting into it. So the timing’s good. Quick story on how we connected. Fall of 2021, one of our clients asked who identify potential candidates for scientific leadership roles who would bring in that hands on experience with psychedelics research into their company.

Jocelyn Scott:

As I started to connect with the various thought leaders in the space, Katrin’s name kept coming up as someone I should talk to. And I tracked you down and you were very gracious to give me your time. We worked across our six hour time zone difference, connected on Zoom, and we did a lot of talking about the space, a lot of networking. What stood out to me about your research was really seeing the potential for treatment and what you were able to share with me. I think that also came from the ease of understanding. The work that you do with brain mapping made it easier for me to see how this could actually turn into something. So I’d love to start with your background and your research journey. What led you to this area of research?

Katrin Preller:

Thank you so much. Yeah. I started off studying psychology in Germany with a focus on clinical and neuropsychology. And back then, I still am, but back then, I was really driven by trying to understand the neuropharmacology of our brain because, I mean, we have all these little molecules in our brain and they just make us fall in love, or they make us perform the most complex cognitive tasks, or they may even alter the consciousness state we’re in. So isn’t that just super cool and fascinating? And so after I completed my masters, I was like, yeah, I really want to understand what’s going on. And the opportunity that came up was a PhD position at the University of Zurich. And there, we were mainly investigating long term effects of people who perturb their pharmacological system chronically by using illicit drugs. And we looked at these brains, we looked at behavioral changes, we looked at their [inaudible 00:05:49] scans just to find out what is altered when you stimulate your system over and over again.

Katrin Preller:

And I think that this is really important work because it directly can help patients who suffer from addiction disorders. However, it did not quite satisfy this interest in really understanding what is going on on the receptor level in the brain. But at that time, after I came to Zurich, I also learned about psychedelic research, which was happening right at the institution where I was. And I got really interested in that and thought, wow, I mean, that could actually be the window into the neuropharmacology that I was looking for.

Katrin Preller:

And so I started doing a postdoc after I graduated. Doing psychedelic research, we were mainly looking into what happens after a healthy participant has taken these substances. So we had them do a lot of tasks, we had them in the brain scanner, and we just tried to find out what’s happening mechanistically once the substances are on board. And then we extended this program a little bit where we’re starting to focus more on classical phase one studies, which of these effects could be helpful for helping patient populations. So what is the something that would really benefit if you use it in the treatment of patients?

Katrin Preller:

I then went to University College London and to Yale University and then returned back to Zurich and started a research group there. And that was then the time when we really started to do these clinical trials. So using psychedelic and phase two trials, trying to find out if they help various patient groups. So we are mainly working with depressed patients and alcohol addicted patients right now. And we’re also trying to find out why they help these patients.

Jocelyn Scott:

That’s great. That’s great. What’s interesting, as I was doing my research, so much brought me back to Europe. And I guess it makes sense based on, from what I understand in the United States, researchers weren’t necessarily able to access these compounds for a period of time. I connected with so many of your colleagues in London coming from that group. Learned just an amazing amount working with these folks. And I was excited to see in this community of scientists the interconnectedness and the helpfulness. Everybody, even if they weren’t interested in the opportunity I was trying to recruit them for, was willing to help me and willing to spend time with me and connect me with the right people. So it was nice to see.

Jocelyn Scott:

I really, specifically, when I looked at your work around the neurobiology of psychedelics and that brain mapping imaging, for me, that was eyeopening. And again, I’m a layman so to be able to see in black and white and color in the maps that you put together where this was actually happening and what it was impacting in the brain, it blew my mind, to be honest with you. So kind of at a high level, what have your findings been? What have you seen?

Katrin Preller:

Yeah, so what we have been doing is two different ways of trying to find out what these substances do. And one is basically just administering the substance and not having our participants do anything. So they just lie in the scanner and we just observe what the brain is doing when it’s under the influence of the substance. And this is usually leading to these really colorful brain maps that you saw. And so what we found out using this specific method is that while, first of all, there is a structure in our brain, it’s pretty much at the center of the brain, but it is specifically there for gating information to the cortex. So what that means is it is basically filtering important information from unimportant information and only keeps the important information for further processing in these cortical brain regions. So that’s the first step, the first gate, that everything that comes from either our own body or from the environment needs to pass.

Katrin Preller:

And what we see in there is that this brain region, the thalamus, is not working as it usually does under the influence of psychedelics. And this holds true for LSD as well as psilocybin. So this filtering function is just not working as it usually does, meaning that different kinds of information pass on to the cortex. And what we’ve seen is then, looking at the cortex, that the brain regions, which are responsible for receiving all this input from our senses, like our visual input, our auditory input, et cetera, that these brain regions are very highly connected to the rest of the brain and with each other. So that speaks for really increased sensory processing. There’s a lot of sensory stimulation there. And that is kind of aligned with what our participants also report. It’s a very central state. There’s a lot going on.

Katrin Preller:

But at the same time, we also see that these other brain regions, which do not directly receive the input, but which are responsible for bringing everything together and forming a coherent picture and connecting this information with our past experiences, with what we already know, but also with what we are planning to do and everything like that, so these integration areas, association courtesies, they are less connected to the rest of the brain. So basically, the way we interpret this picture is that we have heightened sensory processing, which is not counterbalanced by integration capacity. So we bring this information together in a new way, in an unusual way, and that might explain why our participants report that they experience themselves and the world in a way that they never have, or why the visual illusions that most of our participants perceive happen, because we bring this information together differently than we usually do.

Katrin Preller:

And especially, this part where we see ourselves in a new light or we see the world differently, this might be something that might actually be helpful for patients who are often stuck in rigid thinking patterns and loops that they cannot really get out of. So basically, opening a new perspective and a different way of thinking, at least for a limited time, may be helpful for these patients to break free from these thinking patterns.

Jocelyn Scott:

Yeah, that really stood out to me in the presentation I wore watched from last fall that you did. And you kind of talked about the key areas that you felt you were really able to explore and identify and ultimately create more questions as a result of this exploration and identification. But you talked about the alterations in the brain networks, you talked about out the alterations in award and emotion processing, which I thought was really interesting, and increased social connectedness, all of which make sense when you think about somebody with depression or other types of behavioral issues that could be impacted. The reduced reactivity to the negative stimuli, too. That was really interesting to me. Do you want to expand on any of that and kind of how you were able to see that?

Katrin Preller:

Yeah, absolutely. So for testing these very specific reactions to the environment, there, we usually use tasks. So we don’t just have people lie in the scanner, but we actually ask them to do something. And when it comes to emotion processing, what we did there is we showed our participants positive pictures, we showed them negative pictures, we showed them neutral pictures, and then measured how the brain reacts to these pictures. And what we know is that there’s a specific area in the brain called the amygdala, just kind of our emotional center of the brain. And the amygdala is usually very reactive to these emotional stimuli. And under the influence of psilocybin, and as other groups have later also shown, also LSD, under the influence of these substances, our amygdala is less reactive to negative input.

Katrin Preller:

And the reason why we think that this is important is because we know that depressed individuals, when we do the exact same tasks with these patients, their amygdala is even more reactive to these negative images than healthy control participants. So that led us to hypothesis that psilocybin and LSD might be able to normalize this heightened reactivity to negative images, and then of course, also help these patients to, again, break free from negative thinking loops, like perceiving the environment in a very negative way, perceiving themselves in a very negative way, and that psilocybin and LSD might help to normalize that.

Jocelyn Scott:

That’s amazing. We’ve learned a bit about the amygdala through some executive coaching work that I’ve been involved in. And we talk about the amygdala hijack, specifically if you’re getting feedback from somebody that maybe you don’t react to it well because you get hijacked by that amygdala. So when I heard you talk about that, it kind of really resonated with things that I’ve been learning about or hearing about recently. That totally makes sense. And then one of the things that stood out to me too was the task that you did around cyberball. And I think that was the negative stimuli one, isn’t it?

Katrin Preller:

Kind of. So for this amygdala reactivity paradigm, we really used standardized negative pictures, which could be pretty much anything, like an aggressive animal, or a gun, or everything that people usually perceive to be negative. But the cyberball paradigm that you’re mentioning is tapping kind of in the same direction but not quite because here for the first time we use social stimuli. And the reason why I was really interested in how psychedelics may alter social cognition, social behavior, is because first of all, we basically know very little about the social pharmacology in our brain, even though social behavior is so important in our everyday life. And at the same time, we also know that there is a big social component when we’re, again, talking about patients. So often, they feel isolated from their social environment. There’s a lot of social withdrawal happening. And we don’t really have good treatments for of that.

Katrin Preller:

And so I was really interested in what happens on a social level if we administer LSD and psilocybin. And because we already knew that psychedelics reduce the reaction to negative input, I was wondering whether that also extend to negative social input, so social rejection. Again, because we also know that in a lot of the patients that we see in the clinics are experiencing a lot of social rejection. And again, when we do the same paradigm with these patients, we see that they react very strongly to these to social rejection, in particular, people suffering from borderline personality disorder, for example.

Katrin Preller:

So we did this paradigm, which basically means that our healthy participant in that case, he comes to our study site, he meets two other people, they say hello to him. We tell everyone, “Yeah, you’ll meet back when you’re in the scanner. You’ll see each other on a screen.” And then we administer the substance. In that case, that was all psilocybin. They go into the scanner and they see these two other people. And what they can do is they can throw a ball to each other. But then what happens is that these other two people start excluding our participant from the game. They just don’t throw the ball to them anymore.

Katrin Preller:

And we know that this social rejection induces this very specific signal in the brain. And also, we know when we just ask our participants later on, “How did that make you feel?” Even though it’s only a game. But basically, everyone gets out of the scanner and is like, “Wow, this was really mean. I did not expect that. That was so mean.” So it’s inducing this emotional response. And at the same time, it’s inducing a signal in the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex, that has been called the social pain signal. So we did that with and without psilocybin and we saw that this social pain signal was reduced under the influence of a psychedelic, and also that people just did not feel so excluded anymore. So we asked a lot of control questions, of course, making sure that they were really aware that they were being excluded, et cetera. And they knew all of that. But the only thing that was changed was really that feeling of being excluded.

Jocelyn Scott:

Wow. Yeah. That one, again, stood out to me because you were able to see that social pain light up in the brain, and then also the correlation with how, is it borderline personality disorder, where you’re seeing that same sort of light up in the brain for patients who are suffering with that?

Katrin Preller:

Yeah. So that’s another study that we did not do ourselves. But we know from the literature, for example, in borderline personality disorder patients that for them, it’s even worse than for healthy controls. And now of course, we are hoping to do things like that in a translational approach where we eventually can test what we’ve seen in our healthy participants and see whether psilocybin also reduces this heightened response in clinical populations, for example, in depressed patients. We’re not quite there yet. We have studied this amygdala response and these data are being analyzed basically as we speak. But we have also run a couple of social tests in our MDD patients. But you cannot do everything in one study, unfortunately.

Jocelyn Scott:

Yes. Yes. I get it. It feels like you’ve done a lot. Your group has done a lot. And again, I was able to have a good amount of conversations in the space over the course of about three months. What else are you seeing? What else is out there on the landscape? What are others doing in the space that looks promising to you?

Katrin Preller:

Yeah. I mean, of course there’s a lot going on in that space right now. So there’s increased interest. Where there hasn’t been any interest for decades, now there’s so much going on. And I think one really important thing that is going on is that these clinical trials, which we had back in the 50s and 60s, of course, but then nothing has happened for a time until very recently, so these clinical trials are starting now again. So I mentioned the two trials that we are currently running in depressed patients, which just recently finished, and substance use disorder patients.

Katrin Preller:

But of course, we are not the only ones running these trials. So there are quite a few trials going on also in different indications, like OCD, for example. And I think to really be able to tell whether these substances are really helpful for patients and can be developed as treatments, we need these clinical trials and we need to have them well controlled and we need a decent amount of patients as well. And I think the field is really moving in that direction and we will get a better impression of whether it’s really helpful or not in the very near future.

Katrin Preller:

However, there’s also one thing where I think the field is missing opportunities right now, and that is this other question, to explore why these substances are helpful, to really find the mechanism of action that eventually helps people and that contributes to symptom relief and all these types of things because we might have something really big here. It might be a trans diagnostic mechanism of action because right now, it seems like psilocybin assisted therapy helps people across various diagnoses. We already talked about substance use. We talked about MDD, OCD and potentially even more. And I mean, I would consider this a breakthrough in psychiatry if we find this trans diagnostic mechanism of action and would be able to leverage this and also would be able to optimize the therapy in a way that it’s most beneficial for each and every patient. And I think, of course, right now, everyone wants to know, well, do they really help? But I really think that understanding why they help is just equally important.

Jocelyn Scott:

Yeah, no, that really makes sense to me. It’s another thing that I just remembered from your presentation was you were able to prove that the serotonin receptors truly had a play in the mechanism of action here through what you did with your patients. You gave some patients that drug, was it ketanserin, that blocks those receptors. And you could see that there was just a completely different way that the compounds were interacting with the brain when you had those receptors blocked.

Katrin Preller:

Yeah, absolutely. So that’s another one of these mechanistic trials that we did in healthy participants. So we first administered ketanserin, which blocks more or less specifically the serotonin 2A receptor. Now, we then administered LSD or psilocybin. And both of the substances, they target a lot of receptors; it’s not only the serotonin 2A. They target quite a few other serotonin as well. In the case of LSD, other dopamine receptors. And we wanted to find out well, which one of these receptors is the one which is responsible for all these effects? And the serotonin 2A, receptor we already knew from animal studies, is the one which is probably responsible for all of this, but we didn’t know in humans.

Katrin Preller:

So we blocked this receptor, we administered the psychedelic substance, and we saw that there’s basically no effect anymore. So I mean, imagine that. So you have a participant and they are on LSD, or we administered the substance, but they’re not feeling anything. So we could not distinguish them at all from the participants where we had administered placebo. And I think that was pretty cool because at the next occasion, they would receive only LSD and they would go into this completely altered state of consciousness. But if you block the serotonin 2A receptor, there’s nothing. At least at the doses that we tested.

Jocelyn Scott:

Totally. Totally. And again, looked very black and white from my non-scientific perspective. You touched on treatment implications. I think this is the place where people always seem to have the most questions. How could this actually work? What would it look like? What would the setting be? I’ve heard a few different versions of what people are envisioning. And then when you and I connected last year, we talked about the potential for personalized healthcare in neuropsychiatry. We talked about potentially getting patients off the need to medicate chronically with this type of treatment. Expand on that a little bit. And I know you just started to touch on treatments, but what do you think is really looking realistic for treatments for patients?

Katrin Preller:

Yeah. Yeah. So the data that we have so far are telling us that with only either a single or maybe two administrations, we can achieve long term beneficial effects. So people are doing better after really minimal exposure to the substance. And that is new. That’s something different. That is not what the medication that is now on the market is doing. There, you really need to take them every single day. But here, we’re talking about really a very limited amount of actual exposure to the substance. And yeah, that would basically be a revolution. It would really be a completely different treatment model.

Katrin Preller:

I have to say though that, of course, we are not administering the substances without any context. But they are embedded in therapeutic work. So we prepare our participants. We have the active session. But then there is more therapy going on afterwards to integrate what they have experienced, to make sense of the experience, and also see how this can then be translated into something that helps patients in their everyday life. But still, it’s a short term therapy and it seems to have long lasting effects. Again, we don’t know how long lasting the effects are. So usually, people are followed up to about three, six, or in some studies 12 months. And it’s very possible that there will be a relapse at one point so I’m not saying that everyone who participates in psychedelic assisted therapy will be healed afterwards. But we do see long term effects. And I think that’s super cool and this is really something very, very new and a very different treatment model.

Jocelyn Scott:

It’s definitely hit the press here in the US, the work that MAPS has been doing with their PTSD patients with MDMA and it’s been on all over the national news, I would say, updating people. And I think that’s created a lot of interest too because it does seem like this combination of treatment and therapy and the work that’s being done while you’re in that state is representing some breakthroughs and some long term cures. So it’s exciting.

Katrin Preller:

Yeah. I truly think it is. And I think that’s another thing where we really need to understand the mechanism of action because as you just said, the work that we do drew the active session, well, we don’t quite know whether it’s the work that we do in the active session or whether it’s the therapeutic work we do right after the active session. And I think there’s a lot of room for optimization still. And if we know what is really important, is it induced neuroplasticity? Is it changes in the serotonin 2A receptor? Is it something more psychological? If you knew the answer to these questions, we could probably be even better in using these substances as a therapeutic approach. And that’s why I think it’s really important to answer all these mechanistic questions here.

Katrin Preller:

And also, the other thing that we’re really hoping for is that because these substances have these very clear subjective effects, so people are experiencing something, that we can eventually probably tailor the administration and the therapy to the personal needs, to really find biomarkers that may be predictive of therapeutic outcome and all these kinds of things, because we already started to link what’s going on in the brain to baseline functional connectivity or to subjective experiences and things like that. So maybe these substances really have the potential to lead the way for personalized medicine. And I think that’s another really big thing in psychiatry.

Jocelyn Scott:

Yeah. It’s amazing. And the biomarkers, that has to do with the mapping, right? The brain mapping and kind of seeing how … Yeah. Okay, good. Good. Sorry. I didn’t let you talk there.

Katrin Preller:

No, you’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. We’re looking for a biological signal that may tell us how good the chances are that someone will respond in a beneficial way to these substances. Right now, we’re doing a lot of work with fMRI, but we’re not restricted to that. It could be any predictive signal really that helps us understand why someone is having this very positive response and has really long term beneficial effects and others maybe not. And I really think that we do have a chance when it comes to psychedelics.

Jocelyn Scott:

That’s great. It’s so exciting. Clearly, what I’ve heard from you here today and then also in your previous presentations, still a lot of questions. There’s still a lot that needs to be uncovered. Do you have any ideas, and I know it’s, again, a lot of questions, but how far away are we from the answers? Any sense of when we might be to a place or at a place where this could really have impact for patients?

Katrin Preller:

Yeah. I mean, for these substances to really be broadly available, they need to undergo the same procedure as every new medication. So that means phase two studies, larger phase three trial, and then filing at the FDA for it to become a regular medication. And I think right now, most academic centers are completing these phase two trials, but the big phase three trials are currently not quite there yet, but will probably happen in the very near future. And very much will depend on whether these trials show positive effects or not. If they do, then I think chances are not too bad that this will become another tool in a psychiatrist’s toolbox to help people. But it might still be five, six, seven years. It’s really very much depending on the data and how the regulatory authorities assess the status because as I said, it’s a kind of a novel treatment model, comes together with therapy. We will need to figure out what training is needed for therapists to be able to administer the substance, to be able to perform the therapy.

Katrin Preller:

We also have a bit of an issue with the blinding. So for most participants, it becomes pretty clear whether they had the active substance or not. And I think these are all questions that we still don’t have really good answers to. So there is more work that needs to be done so I wouldn’t hope for a very fast process. But realistically, I’d say, well, give the field another five to 10 years.

Jocelyn Scott:

Got it. Got it. There has certainly been increased interest from the investor community. I think that some of the larger companies are starting to back smaller studies as well, from what I’ve seen. So once you start to see the investment flowing into this space, that could potentially impact how quickly we can get into some of those more extended trials. So that’s so exciting. Katrin, this was great. Now, I have to ask you a couple of questions that we ask everybody here on The Mix Tape. Number one, what was your favorite, or you could even say the oddest, interview question you’ve ever been asked?

Katrin Preller:

Yeah. So I don’t necessarily know if there was ever a really odd question. I mean, I like answering all kinds of questions. But there is one question that I get repeatedly, and this is how can I get involved in this? And I think that’s an awesome question. Especially a lot of junior scientists, psychology students, et cetera, ask me that. And my answer is usually figure out what exactly want to do. I mean, psychedelics is just such a broad field. You can enter it as a therapist, you can enter it as a medical doctor, but you can also enter it as a computer scientist or a philosopher. So there’s so many ways of how to approach this field that, just figure out what you really want to do and be good at that and then add psychedelics to that.

Katrin Preller:

And of course, if you’re not necessarily aiming for a career in research, then of course there are many, many other ways of how to get involved. One is, as you just said, obviously we’re always lacking funding, so that’s a way to get involved. Or for example, basically donate your time by participating in these studies. And not all of them, of course, involve taking a psychedelic, that all of them involve traveling somewhere. There are surveys going on where, again, you don’t even need to have used these substances before. There are just so many ways how people can contribute to that. And without all the people who are contributing in these various ways, we wouldn’t be able to do the research at all.

Jocelyn Scott:

That’s great. That’s a good reminder too. Before I ask you the next question, we are going to include the link to the study you’re doing right now so that anybody who listens to this or takes a look at what we’re doing here, can click on that link and get involved themselves in a study, which I think is great.

Katrin Preller:

Wonderful. That is amazing. And as I said, you don’t need to have any experience with psychedelics to participate. If you do, that’s good, but there’s no need to have any experience to support this study.

Jocelyn Scott:

Good. Good, good, good. Okay. And then the next question that we ask every guest is your favorite song. We’re going to actually include it on our mix tape that we have along with the podcast. So what’s your favorite song?

Katrin Preller:

Yeah. That might actually be the best question that I’ve ever received in an interview. I love it. I love it so much. So I have always liked the band called The Cat Empire. And right now in these times, I would put The Chariot on the list.

Jocelyn Scott:

Fantastic. All right. Good. Well, that will be added to the list for sure. This has been great. I think kind of the key takeaways for me are, yes, we still have a lot of questions. This truly looks to be ground work in this space and potential transformative options and therapies for the patients who are impacted. And we need involvement. We need more funding, we need more studies, we need more involvement at all levels to see this actually come to fruition.

Katrin Preller:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, I think there will be great progresses in the next few years. And I hope that in a couple of years, I can come back and tell you about what’s happened in the meantime.

Jocelyn Scott:

Well, I can’t wait to hear the results of your clinical trial, which I know are pending. So I’ll be keeping my eyes open to see that. And Katrin, thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing your information with us. This has been a real pleasure.

Katrin Preller:

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Valerie McCandlish:

Thank you so much to Jocelyn and Katrin for joining us for our episode today. I think it’s really interesting that if maybe if Katrin didn’t even find the group that was doing this type of study, she may not have even been able to get into the amount of work that she’s been able you achieve so far. So it kind of goes to show that really exploring all the potential avenues, or sometimes you just happen upon the right opportunity, can lend you down such an awesome path for the rest of your career.

Natalie Taylor:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I had the same thought listening to this. And I think this is just such an interesting topic and it has so much potential. Like they mentioned, this could be a huge breakthrough in psychiatry, and I’m personally really looking forward to seeing how this progresses over time and how these breakthroughs can really hopefully make a difference for people. I think we see this in our friends or family or peer groups, that a lot of people do goal with mental illness or anxiety, depression. A lot of people our age are on medication and are just kind of trying to find ways to work through it. And I think the more the merrier, in terms of finding research and progression in treatment. So I’m really interested to see how this progresses, and we will be sharing a link to participate in Katrin’s study in the show notes as well as on our Mix Talent LinkedIn page. So keep an eye out for that if you would like to participate.

Valerie McCandlish:

I’m excited to check out the study. I’m excited to check out these brain scans that Katrin and Jocelyn were discussing because they sound so cool. I’m really excited to get a visual for what we’ve been hearing about in this episode. And additionally, can’t wait to add her song to the playlist. As a reminder, you can check out all of the songs of our guests on The Mix Tape playlist on Spotify. We’ve got a new episode each week for our podcast. And as always, thanks for being in the mix. We’ll see you next wee