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Thank you.

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The last talk was about

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electronic technology
and enhancing the brain.

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My talk's about an old technology
enhancing the brain;

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an old technology
that of course, you all know and love,

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and that's called drugs.

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But I'll come to that in a minute.

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I'm going to start with the brain

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because it's the most complex
and evolved element

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in the whole universe.

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It's what got you here today,
and hopefully, will get you home tonight.

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A single mouse brain has
more computing power

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than all the computers on Earth today.

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Your brains are at least
a million times more powerful.

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But unfortunately, it can go wrong.

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Over the last few years,

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we've discovered the scale of problems
that brain disorders produce.

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The sum total of illness and cost
to society from brain disorders

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is greater than that from cancer,

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cardio-vascular disease,
and diabetes put together.

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You see on the graph there

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it's the equivalent each year
to nearly 800 billion euros.

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It is if we're paying off
the Greek debt every year

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in the burden of illness
produced by brain disorders.

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We know that investment in these disorders
is not matching the enormous burden.

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Here, you can see
on the left hand graph, the red circle;

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'brain disorders' are way outside
the predicted line of investment.

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They're the largest disability,

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and the investment is
disproportionately low.

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On the right-hand side, you can see
one of the reasons for this.

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You can see the attrition rate for drugs

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that go through discovery
into development.

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Look at the second cylinder there.

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You can see that from 
200 Alzheimer's drugs in development,

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only one reaches the clinic.

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The brain is
a very difficult organ to treat.

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Why does the brain go wrong?

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It goes wrong
because of external influences:

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malnutrition, still a big problem;

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parental and other abuse
- psychological and physical -;

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toxins - particularly alcohol.

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These are images of my own research
showing a normal brain at the top

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and a brain severely damaged
by alcohol misuse lower down.

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Infections such as meningitis,
encephalitis are still common,

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and trauma is a massive problem

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in terms of leading
to long-term brain damage

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particularly in young men.

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And then, there are internal aspects
of the brain development

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that can go wrong:
related conditions like autism.

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You can have acquired
abnormalities like epilepsy

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and there are age-related changes
such as dementia.

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But the real focus of my talk today
is how the brain limits itself

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and how we can perhaps expand its capacity
or take away the limit it puts on itself.

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Your brain is most flexible
when you're a baby.

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Some people would argue

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that the whole process of education
is about taking away flexibility

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and forcing every one of you
to think and behave in the same way.

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It's about getting conformity of process

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which of course is useful

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if you're trying to speak a language
the same way as other people,

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but may not be useful

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if it limits how you can deal with
other things such as problems.

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And also, the constraining of the brain
in itself can lead to problems;

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if there is not enough of it
in the right place,

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you get disorders
such as ADHD and schizophrenia.

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If you get excessive constraints,

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you can end up with disorders
like OCD and addiction.

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And also the resilience
in the brain can be impaired,

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and that will lead to disorders
such as anxiety and depression.

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The core of my talk really is showing you
how we can now understand

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the limitations that the brain
constrains the mind with

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through using drugs.

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This research really goes back
to the 1950s

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and the personal experience
of this man, Aldous Huxley,

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who used peyote and used
LSD, psychedelic drugs,

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to understand his mind.

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He wrote about it in the book
"The Doors of Perception,"

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and he used this quote from William Blake

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to explain how these drugs
changed his mind.

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He said, "If the doors
of perception were cleansed,

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everything would appear
to man as it is, Infinite.

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For man has closed himself up

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till he sees all things through
narrow chinks of his cavern."

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And Huxley realized
that what psychedelics do

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is take away this phenomenon
that he inferred

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which is that "the brain is
an instrument for focusing the mind."

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Modern neuroscience
has shown they were right.

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Because, what we now know

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is that the brain creates
what the mind thinks it's doing.

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Here is an example of vision.

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You might be looking out
at a glorious sunset,

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but in reality, the light rays
go into your retina

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and are transformed
into a series of electrical impulses

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which pass into parts in your brain.

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And those parts of the brain
reconstruct an image

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that they think you're seeing.

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And that image, in the words of Blake,

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is seeing through the constraints,
the chinks of the cavern

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that your brain puts on it.

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And if you have mental illness
- for instance, depression or addiction -

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then what you see is also
constrained by your brain.

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So depressed people don't see
even the brightness of the sky.

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They see a dull grey.

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And of course, people with addiction

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when they see through
the chinks of their cavern,

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they simply see the drugs
that they're addicted to.

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Psychedelic drugs
take away that limitation.

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They allow the mind to work
in a much more flexible way.

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This is our research using psilocybin
in magic mushroom juice.

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Those two images contain
the same number of connections.

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But on the left-hand image, under placebo,

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you see that most of the connections
are around the edge.

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The brain talks to itself
in regional ways.

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But under psilocybin,

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there's a massive cross-talk,
much more integration;

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parts of the brain which haven't talk
to each other since you were children

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are able to engage.

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And that's how people can get new insights

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and also, potentially overcome damage
of dysfunction of the brain.

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Here is another study using LSD
showing essentially the same thing.

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On the left-hand side,

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you see the visual cortex is
normally very local in how it works.

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But under LSD,
when people have their eyes closed,

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they can see enormously vivid,
interesting sets of images.

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And that's because the brain is
much more interconnected under LSD

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than normal.

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Here you see that the visual cortex

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connects to most of the rest
of the brain in that state.

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We've been able to utilize this liberation
of processing of the brain,

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produced by psychedelics,

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to treat people with depression.

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Here is a study published last year

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where we took people with depression

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who failed two previous
anti-depressive treatments,

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and also had failed psychotherapy.

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They were given
a single dose of psilocybin,

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and you can see there, that a week later,

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all of them had recovered to some extend,

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and half of them were now
in a state of remission.

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They were in the yellow bar there,

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which shows that their depression
has actually gone away.

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And that's not the first evidence

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that psychedelics have therapy
or have therapeutic uses.

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We also have evidence
from around the world

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that psilocybin can be useful in helping
people deal with alcohol dependence,

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with smoking dependence,
with obsessive compulsive disorder.

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And most recently,

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two major studies showing
it can help people come to terms

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with the anxiety and the depression

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which almost always accompany
a diagnosis of a terminal illness.

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So, these drugs can have
potentially enormous opportunities

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for helping people deal
with mental distress.

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It's not just psychedelics
that can have that potential.

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Many illegal drugs have medical uses.

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So for non-psychedelics
such as MDMA, ecstasy,

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where there is good evidence
in post-traumatic stress disorder

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and also some studies
going on in addiction.

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And of course, there is cannabis

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where we have a range
of different disorders

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from pain, spasticity, cancer, epilepsy,

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inflammatory diseases,
and also sleep disorders.

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All of these, potentially, are amenable
to treatment with cannabis.

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So, why don't we use these drugs?

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That's because the WHL and the UN
have said they are too dangerous,

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which is certainly untrue.

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I can tell you categorically

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none of our patients died
in the experiments we did on them.

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Most of our governments
perpetuate this lie.

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And many of us - hopefully, not you -
have closed minds.

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We do not want to believe
that these might have therapeutic utility.

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So I want to say to you now,

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surely now: you, if not everyone,

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should accept the fact

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that these drugs potentially
could be very important medicines.

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For the sake of the millions of people
in the world who could be helped,

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it's time to say there should be no limits

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to the therapeutic research
we do with these drugs.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)