(From YouTube episode)

The Mysteries of the Human Brain: "the brain is complicated to the point where you can take a compound that'll completely change consciousness and change reality, and that there has to be some sort of neurological at least correlate of that."

— Jon Dean [00:01:58 → 00:02:15]

Exploring DMT in Rodent Models: "So that kind of got me into what I did for my master's in PhD, which was look at rodent models for quantifying endogenously generated DMT within the living rat brain, specifically."

— Jon Dean [00:03:47 → 00:04:04]

The Role of Endogenous DMT: "That's how science works, in my opinion. That's how it works for me, anyways. I think that the psychology and the experiential component of any type of neuroscience is particularly important to understanding how a certain area of the brain works. Because otherwise, it's just a lump of flesh, right? Depending on if you're talking about psychology and experiential content, it's not really known what endogenous DMT is doing."

— Jon Dean [00:14:19 → 00:14:50]

DMT and Brain Chemistry: "when we measured and compared DMT in the rap brain, in the living rap brain, with these microdialysis probes, they're called, we were kind of surprised, too, to see that it was in concentrations comparable to serotonin, about half of serotonin."

— Jon Dean [00:15:06 → 00:15:23]

Ensuring Safety in Psychedelic Studies: "We understand the responsibility of keeping the people that are participating in all of our studies with psychedelics, making sure that they're coming out of the study benefiting in some way, shape, or form."

— Jon Dean [00:24:11 → 00:24:26]

The Nature of Visual Perception and DMT: "So, for our DMT study, we just want to ask some fundamental questions about how vision works and how the brain produces vision, and how a visual perception differs from something like imagination."

— Jon Dean [00:26:47 → 00:27:06]

The Future of Psychedelic Neuroscience: "It's a pretty exciting time to be doing neuroscience, let alone psychedelic neuroscience."

— Jon Dean [00:29:34 → 00:29:40]

The Enigmatic Brain and Psychedelics: "But, yeah, in terms of DMT, the brain is like a soup, right? So it seems like there's other, if not psychedelic molecules. Well, I mean, five MeO DMT has also been reported in bodily fluids. So it could be that that is also in the brain and in the body naturally. No one's really doing these studies for whatever reason, it's pretty bizarre that even if it doesn't turn out to be what people think it is in terms of oh my God, it's why we have near death experiences, it's still pretty fascinating that a molecule that is such a powerful psychedelic is naturally in our bodies. And understanding why that's the case, I think would really help us understand the brain a lot better."

— Jon Dean [00:41:53 → 00:42:50]

Exploring the Role of DMT in the Human Body: "There could be a system that isn't necessarily the serotonin system that is engaged by psychedelics. And a prime candidate for that system would be an endogenous DMT system, right? Because it's a molecule that has psychedelic properties that exist naturally. So if we understood more about how that compound exists in our bodies and what its physiological role is in our bodies, that's kind of step one before asking the bigger questions."

— Jon Dean [00:47:26 → 00:47:59]

Exploring Death Through a Psychedelic Lens: "It was very psychedelic experience, not quite in the classical sense of taking a psychedelic, but the effective qualities and overtones were there."

— Jon Dean [00:55:01 → 00:55:13]