# MDMA as a Treatment for Social Deficits in Schizophrenia

> **NIH NIH DP5** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2023 · $392,604

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Impaired social motivation, or “asociality,” is a negative symptom of schizophrenia and a cause of significant
functional impairment in the illness. Whereas many symptoms of schizophrenia can be treated with
antipsychotic medications, deficits in social motivation persist, leading to significant social disability in patients.
There is currently no effective treatment for this symptom of the illness. One promising and unexplored avenue
to enhance social motivation in schizophrenia is ± 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). MDMA is a
psychostimulant that shares some pharmacological properties with amphetamines, but in addition, has
pronounced pro-social effects, increasing the motivation to engage socially. In healthy volunteers, it produces
feelings of empathy and closeness with others and increases attention to positive social cues, perhaps partly
through its effects on the social bonding hormone, oxytocin. MDMA has shown promise in other psychiatric
conditions such as PTSD. Thus, MDMA could offer a unique therapeutic benefit in patients with schizophrenia
who suffer from impaired social motivation. We plan to test the hypothesis that MDMA enhances social
motivation in patients with schizophrenia by conducting a two-phase study. The first phase (Aim 1) will be an
open-label, ascending-dose, within-subject trial in which participants will receive 40mg, 80mg, or 120mg of
MDMA. The doses will be administered in ascending order, but doses will be stopped if subjects experience
moderate or greater psychotic symptoms at 24 hours. This trial will assess the tolerability of the drug in this
population and guide in the selection of a maximum well-tolerated dose for the second phase. The primary
tolerability measure will be clinician-rated psychotic symptoms (disorganized speech, delusions, hallucinations)
collected at 24 hours after MDMA administration. Phase 2 (Aim 2) will be a randomized, placebo-controlled
trial using a crossover design to test the acute effects of MDMA on social motivation and plasma oxytocin in
patients with schizophrenia. Social motivation will be assessed using a social attention bias task (ABT), which
has been validated in MDMA trials with healthy volunteers, in addition to secondary behavioral and self-report
measures of social motivation. The results of this project will lay the foundation for further investigations of
MDMA and other psychoactive compounds as a treatment for debilitating and difficult-to-treat social deficits in
schizophrenia. Future studies will examine interactions between the effects of psychoactive compounds and
nonpharmacologic psychosocial interventions targeting social symptoms.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10696852
- **Project number:** 1DP5OD036172-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Anya K Bershad
- **Activity code:** DP5 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $392,604
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2023-09-21 → 2028-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10696852

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10696852, MDMA as a Treatment for Social Deficits in Schizophrenia (1DP5OD036172-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10696852. Licensed CC0.

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