[imagesource:gencraftai]

A lot of people report coming out of a trip from psychedelics feeling like a whole new person.

What if someone told you there is actual scientifically-backed proof to that and that psychedelics also have the potential to solve everything from depression to blindness to anorexia to autism to stroke?

For the past few years, Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Gul Dolen has been busy experimenting with psychedelics, notes VOX. After some experiments giving octopuses MDMA and mice LSD, she has racked up some rather groundbreaking research.

Her research shows psychedelics could very well be the “master key” to healing some of the darkest and most debased forms of the human condition. These drugs, she’s found, are basically like hitting a “reset” button in the brain, temporarily bringing it back to a childlike state, where the mind is super malleable and good at learning new things.

Dolan is testing how they can help people relearn all sorts of things they’ve lost the ability to do because of health conditions, for example;  help stroke patients move or walk again, even if the stroke occurred years earlier.

Listen to the conversation between Dolen and The Gray Area where she discusses what she learned from octopuses and mice and how she’s currently using psychedelics to try to heal humans.

Dolen was recently named one of our Future Perfect 50, Vox’s annual list of trailblazers working on solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems.

[source:vox]