Earlier this year, a team of researchers from the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelic and Neurotherapeutics revealed in Science that psychedelics spur cortical neuron growth by activating intracellular pools of 5-HT2A receptors. This neuroplasticity combats withering dendritic spines, a characteristic of several neuropsychiatric disorders.

While people have touted the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics for decades, it’s only been within the last five years that UC Davis researchers discovered that compounds like LSD, DMT and psilocybin promote neuroplasticity, spurring the growth and strengthening of neurons and their connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. But how do you strip a psychedelic of its hallucinogenic properties? David Olson, founding director of the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics, walks us through this process.

The Mahoney Institute for Neurosciences at the University of Pennsylvania recently gave David Olson, founding director of the UC Davis institute, its Rising Star Award in Neurobiology of Psychedelics. The award, according to Penn, honors a researcher “at the forefront of unraveling the mechanisms underlying the actions of psychedelics in the brain or translating these discoveries into interventions that preserve, restore and enhance brain function.”