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About This Podcast
A resource for psychiatrists and other medical or behavioral health professionals interested in exploring the neuroscientific basis of psychiatric disorders, psychopharmacology, neuromodulation, and other psychiatric interventions, as well as discussions of pseudoscience, Bayesian reasoning, ethics, the history of psychiatry, and human psychology in general.
This podcast is not medical advice. It strives to be science communication. Dr. O'Leary is a skeptical thinker who often questions what we think we know. He hopes to open more conversations about what we don't know we don't know.
Find transcripts with show-notes and references on each episodes dedicated page at psydactic.buzzsprout.com.
You can leave feedback at https://www.psydactic.com.
The visual companions, when available, can be found at https://youtube.com/@PsyDactic.
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Recent Episodes
Dissociation - What is it really?
Dr. O'Leary explores the neuroscience of dissociation, defining it as a degenerate concept that refers to a wide range of functional disconnections within the brain rather than a single clinical…
Can hooking your head up to a fancy battery (tDCS) cure depression?
In December 2025, the FDA authorized the Flow F100, an innovative at-home wearable headset that utilizes transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to treat major depressive disorder. Unlike…
Game Theory for Parents and Other Humans with Kevin Zollman
PsyDactic welcomes The Game Theorist's Guide to Parenting co-author, Kevin Zollman who discusses game theory as the science of strategic thinking. We explore how mathematical models like the…
Childhood Deficit Disorder and the Atrophy of American Childhood
Dr. O'Leary proposes Childhood Deficit Disorder as a way to conceptualize the rise in mental health issues among modern youth, exploring how systemic changes in culture and environment contribute. He…
Clozapine - Beyond the Basics
Dr. O'Leary explores the history of clozapine, highlighting its initial revolutionary impact as the first atypical antipsychotic, followed by a ban on its use, followed by its re-emergences as a…
Therapeutic Ultrasound with Dr. Michael Canney PhD
This episode includes a fascinating interview with a researcher in ultrasound, Dr. Michael Canney who is an acoustics researcher the chief scientific officer at a French company named Carthera…
Pediatric Bipolar vs Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder
This PsyDactic podcast episode, hosted by Dr. O'Leary, delves into the complex and often controversial topic of diagnosing Pediatric Bipolar Disorder and its differentiation from other conditions,…
Gambling Disorder - Rarely Diagnosed, Highly Prevalent
Gambling disorder may be the most under-diagnosed disorder in the DSM. This is an exhaustive treatment of the neurobiological, psychological, and societal aspects of gambling addiction, featuring…
Functional Neurological Disorder, Predictive Processing and Active Inference
Functional Neurological Disorder was previously called Conversion Disorder or psychogenic neurological symptoms and is a condition in which a patient develops any number of neurological symptoms…
Behaviorism Part 1 - Classical Conditioning
Dr. O'Leary introduces PsyDactic - Child and Adolescent Board Study edition by sharing the first of two episodes on behaviorism, that field of psychology that took the radical stance of completely…
Nicotinic Receptors, Anxiety, and PTSD - an A.I. generated discussion
-- Dr. O'Leary explores how an artificial intelligence tool summarizes recent data on the use of nicotinic receptor modulators for the treatment of anxiety and PTSD. Please send any comments to…
An extraordinary perspective on Suicide Risk Assessments from Dr. Tyler Black via Psychiatry Boot Camp
"People are 14 times more likely to die during a hospital stay than outside of hospital for inpatient psychiatry." In the last episode, I shared an episode of Psychiatry Boot Camp, which is a…
Dr. Mark Mullen interviews Dr. Awais Aftab and Dr. Allen Frances on Psychiatry Boot Camp
In the last episode, Dr. O'Leary interviewed the creator and host of the Psychiatry Bootcamp Podcast, Dr. Mark Mullen, who is currently a psychiatry clerkship director at St. Louis University School…
Meet the Psychiatry Bootcamp Podcast brought to you by Dr. Mark Mullen
Dr. O'Leary is excited to introduce you to Psychiatry Boot Camp (PBC), a podcast created by Dr. Mark Mullen during his psychiatry residency to help prepare medical students for psychiatry residency.…
In a Word - Agonist
--In today's episode, Dr. O'Leary explores agonists, inverse agonists, partial agonists, and antagonists. These terms describe how molecules bind to receptors and either increase, decrease, or…
In a Word - Transference (with a dash of neuroscience)
--Dr. O'Leary discusses the term Transference, and if you listen until the end, he relates it to some computational neuroscience. Transference is a historically loaded term. Transference is…
Catatonia in Autism and Neuroatypical Patients - Easy to miss, Harder to Treat
-- More recently I have faced the diagnostic conundrum of catatonia in autism, and that is what I want to explore in more excruciating detail today. There is surprisingly little literature on the…
Mindhunting with Forensic Psychiatrist Dr Michael Schirripa
-- Dr. O’Leary interviews forensic psychiatrist and author Dr. Michael Schirripa about his career as a forensic psychiatrist, the release of his first thriller, Mindhunt, and his podcast…
Psychedelics - A skeptical approach to MDMA aka Ecstasy
- - In the world of psychotropic medication, the question is not just whether it works or not, but whether it works better than a placebo and whether the effect size is clinically significant and the…
The Narrative Fallacy in Psychological and Psychiatric Clinical Practice with Dr. Alexey Tolchinsky, PsyD
The Narrative Fallacy describes our tendency to find meaning, connections, and causal relationships where they do not necessarily exist. In this episode, Dr. O'Leary had the pleasure of interviewing…
Frequently Asked Questions
PsyDactic has published 80 episodes since December 2021, covering topics in Health & Fitness, Medicine.
PsyDactic is currently active with new episodes every 2 weeks. Average episode length is 25m.
Sign up on Grep.FM to access contact details for PsyDactic, including email and social media links.
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