Draulio Araújo

Draulio Araújo is a Brazilian neuroscientist known for combining clinical trials, neuroimaging and electrophysiology to study the neural and subjective effects of classical psychedelics. He has been centrally involved in experiments using SPECT, fMRI, EEG and neurometabolic measures to characterise the acute psychedelic state induced by ayahuasca and DMT, and in clinical investigations reporting rapid antidepressant responses in people with recurrent depression following single doses. His work frequently integrates quantitative analyses of subjective reports with objective brain measures to map phenomenology to neural mechanisms.

Araújo's contributions span mechanistic laboratory studies (for example, demonstrating altered cortical travelling waves under DMT and describing the neurometabolic/functional connectivity correlates of the ayahuasca state) and applied clinical research (including SPECT and clinical assessments of antidepressant action). He has also investigated subacute effects such as the ‘after‑glow’, and characterised how psychedelics influence cognition, creativity and the stream of thought at low and moderate doses. Methodologically, he is notable for multimodal approaches that bridge subjective, behavioural and neurophysiological levels of analysis in psychedelic science.