Yung Yi Hsiao, MS

Psychedelics are known to change the way the mind operates. Growing interest in the use of psychedelics in public health stems from clinical data showing a single dose of psychedelics being sufficient to drive immediate and enduring relief from neuropsychiatric disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Despite rising clinical interest, the molecular and cellular basis of psychedelic-induced plasticity remains unknown, where mechanistic insights into the transformative and long-lasting effects of psychedelics are necessary for its safe and effective use. Concurrently, advancement of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technologies opens up the possibility for programmable gene modulation in treatment of diseases. My goal is to combine the two rapidly developing fields of psychedelics and gene therapy to make CRISPR-based tools to target molecular pathways in treating defective plasticity in the brain.