Effects of external stimulation on psychedelic state neurodynamics
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Recent findings have shown that psychedelics reliably enhance brain entropy (understood as neural signal diversity), and this effect has been associated with both acute and long-term psychological outcomes, such as personality changes. These findings are particularly intriguing, given that a decrease of brain entropy is a robust indicator of loss of consciousness (e.g., from wakefulness to sleep). However, little is known about how context impacts the entropy-enhancing effect of psychedelics, which carries important implications for how it can be exploited in, for example, psychedelic psychotherapy. This article investigates how brain entropy is modulated by stimulus manipulation during a psychedelic experience by studying participants under the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or placebo, either with gross state changes (eyes closed vs open) or different stimuli (no stimulus vs music vs video). Results show that while brain entropy increases with LSD under all of the experimental conditions, it exhibits the largest changes when subjects have their eyes closed. Furthermore, brain entropy changes are consistently associated with subjective ratings of the psychedelic experience, but this relationship is disrupted when participants are viewing a video─potentially due to a “competition” between external stimuli and endogenous LSD-induced imagery. Taken together, our findings provide strong quantitative evidence of the role of context in modulating neural dynamics during a psychedelic experience, underlining the importance of performing psychedelic psychotherapy in a suitable environment.
Date Issued
2024-02-07
Date Acceptance
2023-09-26
Citation
ACS Chemical Neuroscience, 2024, 15 (3), pp.462-471
ISSN
1948-7193
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Start Page
462
End Page
471
Journal / Book Title
ACS Chemical Neuroscience
Volume
15
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This publication is licensed under
CC-BY 4.0 .
CC-BY 4.0 .
License URL
Identifier
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschemneuro.3c00289
Subjects
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
BRAIN
Chemistry, Medicinal
complexity
COMPLEXITY
consciousness
DEPTH
DRUGS
ENTROPY
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
MUSIC
neuroscience
Neurosciences
Neurosciences & Neurology
Pharmacology & Pharmacy
psychedelics
Science & Technology
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2024-01-12