Niels Hutten

Niels P. W. Hutten (publishes as N. P. W. Hutten) is a clinical psychopharmacologist and experimental researcher whose work focuses on the physiological and neural mechanisms of low-dose and microdosed classic psychedelics. He has led and contributed to randomised, placebo-controlled trials in healthy volunteers examining how low doses of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) influence pain perception, acute peripheral biomarkers (including blood plasma brain-derived neurotrophic factor), and inter-individual variability in neural responses. His research combines experimental pharmacology, psychophysics and biomarker assays to probe dose-dependent effects that are subtle relative to full psychedelic doses but potentially relevant for therapeutic and subtherapeutic applications.

Hutten has also contributed to neuroimaging studies exploring how serotonergic psychedelics alter glutamatergic signalling and subjective phenomena such as ego dissolution, informing mechanistic models linking receptor-level pharmacology to network-level brain changes and subjective experience. Across his body of work he emphasises placebo-controlled designs, careful characterisation of subjective and objective endpoints, and the identification of peripheral and imaging biomarkers that might predict individual sensitivity or therapeutic potential of low-dose psychedelic interventions.