Frederick Barrett, PhD

Frederick Barrett, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is the Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Dr. Barrett has been conducting psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins University since 2013. His research in heathy participants and in patients with mood and substance use disorders focuses on the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underlying the acute subjective and enduring therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs. Dr. Barrett has developed scientific instruments and published foundational papers on the psychometric evaluation of both mystical and challenging experiences evoked by psychedelic drugs. He published first-in-human studies of the acute effects of the atypical hallucinogen salvinorin A on the brain, and the persisting effects of the classic psychedelic drug psilocybin on cognition and brain function for weeks and months after a single administration. He has also published first-in-human studies of the effects of psilocybin on a brain structure called the claustrum, which was hypothesized by Francis Crick and Christoph Koch to be the conductor of consciousness. Dr. Barrett has been featured on the TEDMED stage and PBS NOVA, and he has appeared on NPR, CNN, The Associated Press, The Telegraph, The Hill, Scientific American, Discover Magazine, Business Insider, Vogue, Wired, VICE, Nature Outlook, Scripps Research, and local public radio stations throughout the United States and abroad.