(BCN) -- A new research project from the University of California, San Francisco aims to study the effects of psychedelic substances outside of a lab setting to understand more about why they affect people in different ways.
The goal is to gain more insight into the potential benefits of psychedelics in treating diseases and conditions and would serve as a starting point for further, more targeted studies, according to a statement from UCSF.
To that end, scientists are asking people who take or plan to take such substances to volunteer for a project that will ask them to report their experiences and allow researchers to observe them, mostly remotely.
Researchers will not provide or encourage the use of psychedelics for the study but are instead seeking people already planning to take drugs including psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, ibogaine, MDMA, and ketamine at home, organized retreats, or similar settings, according to the university.
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The initiative, called the Canopy Project, is run by UCSF professor of neurology Robin Carhart-Harris and received funding through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.
The study is one of three that were awarded a total of $8.5 million to study psychedelics, including another study that will assess impacts on preclinical Alzheimer's disease.
The Canopy Project will follow 3,000 participants before and after their experiences to try to get more data on how the drugs affect people's brain chemistry, mood, and well-being.
"The study will explore why participants decide to take a psychedelic, what their motivation or intention is, what kind of environment they'll be in at the time, what they think and feel beforehand, what the experience is like for them, and any changes they notice afterward or we observe based on their responses to psychometric measures," researchers wrote in the consent form for participants.
Carhart-Harris said the study will involve people using substances where they naturally decide to take psychedelics, as opposed to bringing them into artificial settings for observation.
"Psychedelics are widely used outside research labs, yet much of what we know about their effects comes from carefully controlled research settings," Carhart-Harris said in a statement. "CANOPY gives us an opportunity to bring scientific rigor to these experiences at a scale we haven't had before -- to understand not just whether psychedelics can be beneficial, but for whom, under what circumstances, and why."
Participants will complete assessments before and after their experiences and wear electronic devices during their experiences that gather health data. Those who are able to travel to UCSF will undergo brain imaging and EEGs and submit blood and saliva samples for researchers to study.
Participants must be over 18 years old. More information and eligibility requirements are available on the Barhart-Harris website.
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