John Perna, MD

2nd Year Psychiatry Resident, Emory Healthcare

John Perna is a second-year psychiatry resident at Emory. His curiosity about psychedelics and spirituality emerged from his broader interest in how narrative and neurodivergence shape sensory processing and perception. He took an unconventional route to medical school. As an undergraduate at NYU, he focused on the humanities and social sciences where he developed his interest in the power of narrative. After graduating, he was accepted into the NBCUniversal Page Program and then after worked as a trainee at William Morris Endeavor in the theatre and television literary department. In medical school, his research focused on the differences in vision and visual processing in neurodevelopmental disorders which drew his attention to the non-conscious processes that construct perceptual experiences and made him deeply appreciate the diversity of human subjectivity. After engaging with the emerging scientific literature from the current psychedelic renaissance on how these compounds alter perception, increase neuroplasticity, and may reopen critical development periods, he has become fascinated by their many potential therapeutic applications. He is also interested in studying the intersection of the psychedelic renaissance and the current mental health crisis through the lens of social theory.

Publications

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