Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

As the chemical basis of addiction has become clearer over recent years, treatments for addiction have not reflected that understanding and have remained relatively stagnant. Psilocybin is the main psychoactive ingredient present in most species of psychoactive mushrooms, particularly Psilocybe cubensis. Research surrounding psilocybin has increased due to recent breakthrough studies demonstrating anti-depressive and anti-anxiety effects and improvement in quality of life of participants. While the results are hopeful, most of these studies had low participant numbers and more vigorous clinical trials and greater scientific understanding of the therapeutic effects of psilocybin are required to establish psilocybin as an effective and safe therapeutic approach to addiction. This study aims to help create a greater scientific understanding by examining its effects on rat models of addiction. Participants will consist of a cohort of methamphetamine addicted rats that are placed into various controlled settings to measure addictive and abstinent behaviours with or without psilocybin administration at various times prior to the test. The presence or absence of addictive behaviours will be measured by conditioned lever presses and will be statistically analyzed using a factorial ANOVA. Due to the limited amount of research in this area, the results of this study will be impactful whether any significant effects are found or not.