Editing Rick Strassman (section)

==Melatonin research==
Strassman's interest in the human biology of altered states of consciousness led him to study the pineal gland [[hormone]] [[melatonin]] in the 1980s, at which time there were suggestive data regarding its psychoactive effects. This research took place at the University of New Mexico's School of Medicine in Albuquerque, where he became a tenured associate professor of psychiatry. He first developed a model of all-night suppression of melatonin by all-night bright light. He then established a successful exogenous melatonin infusion protocol that replicated endogenous melatonin levels in the bright-light conditions.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Strassman|first1=RJ|last2=Peake|first2=GT|last3=Qualls|first3=CR|last4=Lisansky|first4=EJ|title=A model for the study of the acute effects of melatonin in man.|journal=Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism|volume=65|issue=5|pages=847–852, 1987|doi=10.1210/jcem-65-5-847|pmid=3667882|year=1987}}</ref> All-night bright-light suppression of melatonin suppressed the normal trough of body temperature seen between 3-4 a.m., the time of maximum melatonin levels. Exogenous infusion of melatonin, replicating endogenous levels in the bright-light condition (in which endogenous melatonin was suppressed) reestablished the normal core body temperature trough.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Strassman|first1=RJ|last2=Qualls|first2=CR|last3=Lisansky|first3=EJ|last4=Peake|first4=GT|title=Elevated rectal temperature produced by all night bright light is reversed by melatonin infusion in men.|journal=Journal of Applied Physiology|volume=71|issue=6|pages=2178–2182, 1991|doi=10.1152/jappl.1991.71.6.2178|year=1991|pmid=1778910}}</ref> But melatonin's psychoactive effects were only sedative, leading him to focus on DMT in his future work.