University of Chicago
June 6, 2026
Ruiyan Hu
Negative Emotionality (NEM), a tendency toward intense negative emotions and heightened reactivity, was examined in 30 healthy volunteers in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. NEM did not predict baseline friendliness or changes in social connectedness after a closeness-building procedure. Higher NEM showed a trend toward greater MDMA-induced peak friendliness change. In an exploratory model, NEM predicted MDMA-induced oxytocin release after accounting for sex. These preliminary findings suggest that individual differences in personality and sex may shape drug response, with implications for patient selection and dose optimization in MDMA-assisted therapy for conditions linked to elevated NEM.
University of Chicago
August 1, 2024
Lorna Hadlock
Foreigners, mostly Westerners, travel to the Peruvian Amazon for ayahuasca tourism, and some undertake long-term shamanic training with indigenous Shipibo healers. Central to this training are plant diets—periods of abstinence during which a would-be healer gains knowledge from a teacher plant. Based on ethnographic research at a shamanic training center, this dissertation describes how students learn and experience plant diets, which are a process of merging permanently with a plant spirit. Dieters describe themselves as plant-human hybrids and cultivate an ability to perceive an animate plant world. They develop skills such as attunement, discipline, reciprocity, and discernment to interact with plant spirits. The project argues that what dieters learn supports an alternative ontological stance to Otherness, managing difference in the pursuit of healing.
University of Chicago
August 1, 2022
Alicia Rowland
Low doses of LSD (13 µg and 26 µg) reduce the amplitude of two event-related brain potentials—the P300 and N170 components—measured via scalp electrodes during a visual oddball task in healthy adults. These reductions resemble those seen with full doses of LSD. Event-related spectral perturbations showed decreased power in the alpha and some theta frequency bands, while intertrial coherence remained uniform. The findings suggest that microdoses of LSD can produce subtle changes in brain activity related to attention and stimulus processing without inducing full psychedelic effects, supporting their potential for therapeutic use.
University of Chicago
August 1, 2022
Hyein Park
Comparing the 13th-century Beguine mystics Marguerite Porete and Hadewijch with nondualist tantric Buddhist and Śaiva traditions reveals that desire and emotion are central to comparative mysticism. Porete's radical notion of nothingness, interpreted as a form of no-self, aligns with Buddhist Personalists and Tibetan other-emptiness (zhentong) philosophy, particularly the work of Dölpopa, and with German mystic Eckhart. Hadewijch's despair and love-madness parallel the South Asian concept of Mahā-bhāva (divine ecstasy). Porete's joy, bliss, and beatitude resonate with Tibetan tantric practices influenced by Kaśmīr Śaivism, especially through the aesthetic emotion (rasa) and sensory imagery that intensify ecstatic union. The nondualist tantric union in Buddhism and Śaivism best illuminates Porete's mysticism.