Katrin Preller, Ph.D.
Researcher, Neuropsychopharmacology; ETH Zurich and University of Zurich
Swiss neuroscientist whose research on psilocybin's effects on social cognition, empathy, and self-referential processing provides a mechanistic foundation for understanding how psychedelics alter interpersonal perception.
Biography
Katrin Preller is a neuroscientist and research group leader in neuropsychopharmacology at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. She is one of the world's leading researchers on the social cognitive effects of psychedelics — a domain that is critically important for understanding both the therapeutic potential and the risks of psilocybin-assisted therapy.
Preller's research uses neuroimaging (fMRI) combined with carefully designed behavioral paradigms to examine how psilocybin alters social perception, empathy, and self-referential processing. Her work has demonstrated that psilocybin changes the way the brain processes social information at a fundamental level — affecting how we perceive others' emotional states, how we distinguish self from other, and how we experience social connection.
This research is particularly relevant for understanding why psilocybin-assisted therapy often produces reports of increased empathy, dissolution of social barriers, and renewed sense of connection to others. Preller's work provides the neurobiological substrate for these reported effects — moving them from anecdote to mechanistic understanding.
She has published extensively in high-impact journals including PNAS, Neuropsychopharmacology, and Biological Psychiatry, and her work is regularly cited by researchers developing psilocybin protocols for depression, PTSD, and addiction treatment.
Organizations
Why They Matter to the LearnShrooms Community
The social and relational dimensions of psilocybin experiences are among the most therapeutically significant — and least understood — aspects of psychedelic action. Preller's neuroimaging work provides the mechanistic foundation for understanding how psilocybin affects interpersonal perception, which is central to understanding its therapeutic benefits across depression, PTSD, and relationship-affecting conditions.
