“I daydreamed of having this office for my whole career,” said Dölen. “Finally, I’ve got it.”
While the team has remained active amidst the construction, the finished space finally allows the lab to conduct research at full capacity. A February visit demonstrated the dynamic nature of the lab’s daily operations. Graduate student Kenz Wilkinson was running experiments downstairs. A lab emergency involving a broken pump occupied research technician Dominick Dickerson. Dölen even met with the Drug Enforcement Agency as part of the process to become licensed to work with psychedelic medicine.
Dölen is well-known for her work on critical periods, which are limited windows of time when brain development is more sensitive to environmental stimuli. Like wet cement, there’s a finite period where neural circuits can be molded by experience before solidifying. Critical periods help humans quickly grasp new languages, learn to walk, train their eyesight, override fears, and form strong relationships. It’s one reason why babies and kids develop so rapidly compared to adults.
Scientists have long searched for the “master key” to unlock critical periods. In 2019, Dölen’s team discovered that the psychedelic drug MDMA can reopen critical periods and maintain enhanced learning states for days or even weeks. A few years later, they showed that this effect generalizes across all psychedelics. Now, Dölen is searching for rehabilitative uses for this breakthrough.
On February 9, the Dölen Lab launched a human clinical trial for stroke patients with motor impairment. Patients take carefully managed doses of psychedelics and play a video game with motion-capture technology to facilitate and monitor their recovery. Participants pilot a virtual dolphin through expansive arm movements to capture fish; as they play, the psychedelics work to reopen the neural windows necessary for the brain to relearn these motor functions. If successful, this unique form of physical therapy could form a compelling, new strategy for stroke recovery.
Participants pilot a virtual dolphin through expansive arm movements to capture fish; as they play, the psychedelics work to reopen the neural windows necessary for the brain to relearn these motor functions.
Dölen serves as the Bob & Renee Parsons Endowed Chair in psychology and neuroscience. Bob Parsons is a businessman and Vietnam War veteran who experienced untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (or PTSD) for decades. After reading Michael Pollan’s 2019 book, How to Change Your Mind, he decided to look into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic medicine. It changed his life, and in 2023, the Parsons made a gift to Berkeley that created a new and fully endowed faculty position at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience and psychedelics, to which Dölen was recruited.
Dölen hopes that reopening critical periods can allow people with PTSD to replace fear-based triggers with healthier responses. Her 2019 study found that MDMA (often called ecstasy) encouraged adult mice to seek out more social settings, behavior typically associated with juveniles. This dynamic could improve patients’ trust in their therapists and increase their willingness to open up in group sessions — necessary elements when confronting the intense issues that cause PTSD. The trick is to effectively address unresolved traumas while patients’ critical periods are open to ensure a durable benefit.
“Psychedelics aren’t a magic pill that cures all diseases by themselves,” noted Dölen. “Rather, they’re adjunct therapies that make other therapies work better by restoring the ability of the brain to learn. So, in the case of psychiatric diseases like PTSD and depression, pairing psychedelics with psychotherapy is the appropriate thing to do, but in the case of motor impairments and neurological diseases, the right thing to do is to pair psychedelics with motor therapy.”
Dölen comes with a medical background: She earned a combined M.D./Ph.D. degree and most recently served as a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Moving to UC Berkeley allowed Dölen to expand her lab’s studies on octopuses.
“At Hopkins, we did a bit of octopus work,” said Dölen. “We started sequencing the genome. We did a small amount of behavioral experiments, but really, it was a side project that wasn’t the mainstay of the lab. Now that we’ve been able to restart with a grant from the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation and a new grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, we have now started the octopus project in earnest.”
Patch-clamp electrophysiology rig. Photo by Alexander Rony.
Dölen said her lab’s most used equipment is a machine that produces custom microelectrodes and micropipettes. These help with the extremely precise requirements of the lab’s experiments. Microscopes sit on anti-vibration tables to avoid even the slightest of movements. Components are housed in Faraday cages to block electromagnetic interference.
“The tip of the electrode is inside of the cell body of the neuron, so it has to be isolated,” said Dölen. “Even the vibration from you stepping will cause it to dislodge. This whole lab had to be specially designed. Even the air conditioning vents can cause electrodes to drift.”
People have high hopes for Dölen’s work. Psychotherapy research is a promising medical frontier. Immediately upon accepting UC Berkeley’s offer letter, she became a member of both the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and is partnering with many labs across campus. Philanthropists like the Parsons and Cohen families enable field-defining researchers like Dölen to do their work, with all the equipment and expertise it requires.