Ulrich Schmidt

Dr. Schmidt is a neuropsychopharmacologist whose experimental medicine work investigates the acute behavioural and neural effects of classical psychedelics (notably LSD and psilocybin) and stimulant compounds (including MDMA, methylphenidate and modafinil). Using placebo-controlled, within-subject challenge designs in healthy volunteers and clinical cohorts, Schmidt combines task-based and resting-state fMRI with cognitive and affective paradigms to probe mechanisms by which serotonergic modulation alters perception, emotion bias and cognitive control.

Key contributions include studies characterising LSD-induced changes in thalamic resting-state connectivity and altered hub connectivity associated with phenomenological effects; work on LSD-related modulation of response-inhibition networks; investigations of serotonergic subreceptor-dependent shifts in emotional bias after psilocybin; and comparative acute pharmacology studies examining how methylphenidate, modafinil and MDMA influence negative emotion processing. Methodologically, Schmidt's research emphasises multimodal neuroimaging, psychopharmacological challenge methodology and mechanistic models linking receptor-level pharmacology to network-level brain dynamics with relevance for affective and perceptual disorders.