Deep connectionsPsychedelic science at Cornell, like the brain itself, depends on a network of deep connections. The linkage between most of these collaborations is Kwan. “What I see in Alex’s work, which is really the linchpin that all the rest of us are building on, is this commitment to slow, methodical, careful, mechanistically oriented experiments and projects that help us really understand what these drugs are doing on a molecular, cellular, neural systems basis,” said Chris Schaffer, Meinig Family Professor of Engineering in Duffield Engineering and dean of faculty.Since Kwan joined Cornell’s faculty in 2022, his lab has found that a single dose of psilocybin increased the number of neuronal connections in a mouse brain by about 10%; identified key components of the neural circuit that mediates the long-term effects of psilocybin; and shown how psilocybin weakens the feedback loops that lock people into negative thinking while enhancing sensory-motor responses.“We have been working hard to figure out what are the different cell types and different circuits involved,” Kwan said. “We want to have a brain-wide view of what psychedelics do. And how do we harness the insights to develop better treatment?”