Matthew Bolstridge

Matthew Bolstridge is a research scientist affiliated with the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology (Division of Brain Sciences) who has worked on experimental and neuroimaging studies of classical psychedelics. He has co‑authored multiple placebo‑controlled and healthy volunteer studies exploring the psychological and neural effects of LSD and psilocybin, employing fMRI/MEG, global functional connectivity analyses and behavioural psychometrics. His contributions appear across studies that probe phenomena such as ego dissolution, synaesthesia‑like experiences, broadband cortical desynchronisation and enhanced emotional responsiveness to music under LSD.

Bolstridge’s work spans mechanistic laboratory research and clinically oriented trials; he is a named contributor on high‑profile psilocybin studies for treatment‑resistant depression and on several foundational papers from the Carhart‑Harris group. Through experimental investigations of suggestibility, sensory‑emotional amplification and large‑scale network perturbations, his publications have helped characterise how serotonergic psychedelics alter cortical dynamics and subjective experience, informing both basic neuroscience models (for example, the entropic brain framework) and emerging therapeutic applications.