Hello! My name is Morgan Sexauer, and I am a senior (wooohooo) studying neuroscience with minors in philosophy and public policy. Since my freshman year at the U of A, I have been working in Dr. Torsten Falk’s lab. We study novel treatment methods for Parkinson’s disease, and I have a particular interest in our work regarding how sub-anesthetic doses of ketamine can treat levodopa-induced dyskinesia. Due to my work in the lab, I have realized a career in research can be very rewarding, and I plan to take a gap year after graduation to explore different avenues that research can take me. This summer, I worked very closely on a project where we tested if a string-pulling task can model parkinsonian deficits in our animal models. However, my thesis is a literature review on a broader topic inspired by my work in the lab. I am completing a literature review where I plan to tie together what we know about the mechanisms and therapeutic potential of ketamine, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT. I am passionate about increasing our understanding of these drugs because they seem to hold a lot of promise in bettering how we treat depression, cancer, addiction, anxiety, and Parkinson’s.
