Text icon 'UFR' standing for University of Freiburg
University College Freiburg
Seal element of the university of freiburg in the shape of a flower

Meet Lucca

Lucca majored in Life Sciences and graduated from UCF in 2019. Currently, he is enrolled in a Master in Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience at FU Berlin. Alongside his studies, he is working as a research assistant at the Visual Perception Lab at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Charité.

“At UCF I initially pivoted back and forth between different strands of mental health and biomedical research. I was interested in the human mind and brain, but also in technology and the societal and ethical aspects of mental health conditions and their remedies. In this, I was particularly fascinated with psychopharmacology and the mind-brain gap. LAS allowed me to consider this through the perspective of my major, Life Sciences, but also through the lens of the social sciences and the humanities. Hence, in the courses in Freiburg and in my year abroad at University College Maastricht, I gained insights into research methods in biology and psychology, but also got to engage with philosophical questions surrounding the human mind and the use of psychopharmaceuticals.

This dual perspective is mirrored in the two bachelor’s theses I got to write during my studies, as well as in my journey after LAS. I got to write one bachelor’s thesis about the mechanisms of action of trauma psychotherapy with MDMA (better known for being illicitly sold in the form of ecstasy pills), and one about the phenomenology and ethics of deep brain stimulation for the treatment of depression. For this I interned in the Psychiatric Clinic of the University Hospital Freiburg.

Currently, I’m doing my M.Sc. In Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience at Freie Universität Berlin. Alongside my studies, I’m working as a research assistant at the Visual Perception Lab at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Charité and as a blog editor for the MIND Foundation for Psychedelic Science.

At Charité, I’m assisting research projects that aim to elucidate the brain mechanisms associated with conscious and unconscious visual information processing and how these are altered in individuals diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, particularly schizophrenia. This allows me to learn neuroscientific and psychological research methods first-hand.

MIND is an NGO that supports and conducts research on the effects of psychedelic drugs like psilocybin (the psychoactive ingredient of ‘magic mushrooms’) on mental well-being, e.g. in the treatment of mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. With the MIND Blog, we try to communicate research findings and debates in this research community to a wider audience. The legal status, the widespread recreational consumption, and the commonly held societal view of these substances makes science communication in this field a really exciting task.

I’m really grateful for the time I got to spend at UCF, for having learned to learn and to adapt to new environments. I’m not sure where this path will take me in a year from now, let alone in five. However, I sure hope I can stick with not committing to only one discipline in years to come and I’m confident that I’ll be able to do so.”