Anya Bershad

Anya K. Bershad is a psychopharmacologist who has conducted controlled human laboratory studies examining the acute effects of classic psychedelics at microdose ranges and the empathogen MDMA on social cognition, affective processing and stress reactivity. Working frequently in collaboration with established psychopharmacology groups, her work emphasises careful experimental characterisation of subjective, behavioural and physiological responses to psychoactive compounds and the methodological challenges inherent in translational psychedelic research.

Bershad's contributions include experimental investigations of microdoses of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and their short-term behavioural and subjective consequences, studies showing MDMA's enhancement of positive affective responses to social feedback and its effects on attention to positive social cues and affective touch, and work demonstrating that MDMA does not necessarily buffer responses to psychosocial stress in the Trier Social Stress Test. She has also explored genetic moderators of drug response, such as oxytocin receptor variation, and contributed to critical appraisals of microdosing research methods—helping to refine hypotheses and inform more robust clinical and experimental designs in the current psychedelic research renaissance.