---
aliases:
- McGill
category: Private Organization
created: 2026-06-13
location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
start: 1821
summary: McGill University is a Montreal research university whose affiliated Allan
  Memorial Institute hosted Ewen Cameron's CIA-funded MKULTRA depatterning experiments
  and whose psychologist Donald Hebb conducted the foundational sensory-deprivation
  research.
tags:
- Organization
- Academic
- Canada
- MKULTRA
- ColdWar
title: McGill University
updated: 2026-06-13
---

McGill University is a research university in Montreal, Quebec, chartered in 1821. Its Faculty of Medicine and affiliated teaching hospitals made it one of the leading centers of psychiatric and psychological research in mid-twentieth-century North America, a standing that drew the attention of the [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) during its [MKULTRA](/programs/project-mkultra/) behavioral-control program.[^1]

### Allan Memorial Institute and Subproject 68

The university's [Allan Memorial Institute](/organizations/allan-memorial-institute/), its psychiatric hospital, was directed by [D. Ewen Cameron](/people/d-ewen-cameron/), chairman of McGill's Department of Psychiatry and a past president of the American Psychiatric Association. Between 1957 and 1964 Cameron conducted his depatterning and psychic-driving experiments at the Allan with funding routed through the [Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology](/organizations/society-for-the-investigation-of-human-ecology/), a CIA front, under MKULTRA Subproject 68. Patients admitted for ordinary psychiatric complaints were subjected to drug-induced sleep, intensive electroconvulsive therapy, and [LSD](/concepts/lsd/) without informed consent, and many suffered permanent amnesia and disability.[^1][^2]

### Donald Hebb and Sensory Deprivation

McGill psychologist [Donald Hebb](/people/do-hebb/) carried out the first systematic sensory-deprivation experiments in the early 1950s under a contract with the Canadian Defence Research Board, work that paralleled and informed the interest of British and American intelligence in isolation as a tool of interrogation and attitude change. His findings on the disorganizing effects of perceptual isolation entered the research base later drawn upon in the CIA's [KUBARK](/concepts/kubark-counterintelligence-interrogation/) interrogation manual.[^2][^3]

[^1]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control*. Times Books, 1979, Chapters 8 and 10.
[^2]: Collins, Anne. *In the Sleep Room: The Story of the CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada*. Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1988.
[^3]: McCoy, Alfred W. *A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror*. Metropolitan Books, 2006.