Psychedelics for Stroke Healing with Steven Zeiler, MD, PhD

In this episode Steven Zeiler, MD, PhD joins to discuss the promise of psychedelics for stroke healing. Dr. Zeiler is an associate professor and physician at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine specializing in cerebrovascular disease, including acute stroke therapy, prevention, and recovery. He is a lead investigator for a Rose Hill Life Sciences research trial, conducted in partnership with Johns Hopkins University, exploring the use of psilocybin-assisted therapy to enhance motor function in patients with neurological injuries.

In this conversation, Dr. Zeiler explains that after a stroke, there is a natural but time-limited critical period during which the brain is highly plastic and capable of repairing motor function. His research, inspired by work on psychedelics reopening critical learning windows, shows in animal models that a single high dose of psychedelics combined with intensive rehabilitation can restore lost motor abilities even after recovery has plateaued. Throughout, Dr. Zeiler emphasizes that psilocybin itself doesn’t heal the brain directly but creates a window of heightened neuroplasticity that, when paired with targeted therapy, may dramatically improve recovery outcomes for stroke survivors.

 

In this episode, you'll hear:

• What happens to patients during a stroke
• The critical period of stroke recovery and how psychedelics may reopen this opportunity
• Why conducting a safety and tolerability study of psilocybin for stroke patients is crucial
• What forms of deficits and recoveries Dr. Zeiler’s study will measure 
• Dr. Zeiler’s speculations on what integrating psychedelic treatments into stroke medicine could look like
• The importance of specialized interventions that take advantage of the critical recovery period

 

Quotes:

“What has been a little forgotten about in a lot of stroke management situations is helping the person get over the deficits with which the stroke has left them. And if you can't move an arm, you can't move a leg, that's a big deal. And we are not quite as good at addressing some of those problems.” [5:11] 

“[The potential of psychedelics for stroke recovery] is probably less about addressing the injury itself and more about helping the remaining parts of the brain turn on to address what's lost.” [7:36]

“We're not suggesting that the psychedelic itself has some sort of magical property that would just repair the brain, but it primes the situation to allow that input that we then provide over the next many days, many weeks, to affect a recovery.” [13:31]

“Imagine something as complicated as the brain going through a repair mechanism: could you imagine one molecule acting on one receptor being able to affect a recovery? I couldn't imagine that—it's too complicated a thing. And so having something like a mechanism of action that is acting through multiple pathways, I think has to be the case if we're going to affect something as complicated as brain repair.” [17:30]

 

Links:

Dr. Zeiler on LinkedIn

Super Room for Enriched Neurological Repair at Green Spring (SENRG)

PHATHOM (Psychedelic Healing: Adjunct Therapy Harnessing Opened Malleability)-Stroke Project

Psychedelic Medicine Association

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