Summary: Psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, initiates a pattern of dynamic hyperconnectivity in the brain. This brain state is linked to the ego-modifying effects and feelings of oceanic boundlessness commonly reported during psychedelic experiences.
The findings highlight the potential psychotherapeutic applications of psilocybin for treating various psychiatric disorders. This research provides a deeper understanding of how psilocybin affects brain dynamics and subjective experiences, offering insights into its therapeutic potential.
Key Facts:
- Dynamic Brain Connectivity: Psilocybin induces a state of dynamic hyperconnectivity, which changes over time and correlates with the feeling of oceanic boundlessness.
- Ego-Modifying Effects: The study found that psilocybin’s hyperconnected brain pattern is more strongly associated with ego-modifying experiences than with hallucinatory experiences.
- Therapeutic Potential: These findings are crucial for understanding the neurophysiological mechanisms behind psilocybin’s therapeutic effects, particularly for psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety.
Source: Elsevier
A new study shows that the use of psilocybin, a compound found in the widely known “magic mushrooms,” initiates a pattern of hyperconnectivity in the brain linked to the ego-modifying effects and feelings of oceanic boundlessness.
The findings, appearing in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging help explain the so-called mystical experiences people report during the use of psychedelics and are pertinent to the psychotherapeutic applications of psychedelic drugs to treat psychiatric disorders such as depression.
The concept of oceanic boundlessness refers to a sense of unity, blissfulness, insightfulness, and spiritual experience often associated with psychedelic sessions.
In one of the first brain imaging studies in psychedelic research, investigators found a specific association between the experiential, psychedelic state and whole-brain dynamic connectivity changes.
While previous research has shown increases in static global brain connectivity under psychedelics, the current study shows that this state of hyperconnectivity is dynamic (changing over time) and its transition rate coincides with the feeling of oceanic boundlessness, a hallmark dimension of the psychedelic state.
Lead investigator Johannes G. Ramaekers, PhD, Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, says, “Psilocybin has been one of the most studied psychedelics, possibly due to its potential contribution in treating different disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, death-related anxiety, depression, treatment-resistant depression, major depressive disorder, terminal cancer-associated anxiety, demoralization, smoking, and alcohol and tobacco addiction.
“What was not fully understood is what brain activity is associated with these profound experiences.”
Psilocybin generates profound alterations both at the brain and the experiential level. The brain’s tendency to enter a hyperconnected-hyperarousal pattern under psilocybin represents the potential to entertain variant mental perspectives.
The findings of the new study illuminate the intricate interplay between brain dynamics and subjective experience under psilocybin, providing insights into the neurophysiology and neuro-experiential qualities of the psychedelic state.
Dr. Ramaekers adds, “Taken together, averaged and dynamic connectivity analyses suggest that psilocybin alters brain function such that the overall neurobiological pattern becomes functionally more connected, more fluid, and less modular.”
Previously acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were analyzed for two groups of people; one group of 22 individuals received a single dose of psilocybin, the other 27 participants received a placebo.
During the drug’s peak effects, participants who received psilocybin reported substantial phenomenological changes compared to placebo. Also, brain connectivity analysis showed that a pattern characterized by global region-to-region connectivity was re-appearing across the acquisition time in the psilocybin group, potentially accounting for the variant mental associations that participants experience.
Moreover, this hyperconnected pattern was linked to oceanic boundlessness and unity, which indicates an important mapping between brain dynamics and subjective experience, pointing towards “egotropic effects” (vs hallucinergic) of the drug.
PhD candidate and co-author of the paper Larry Fort, University of Liège, emphasizes: “Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin are often referred to as hallucinogens both scientifically and colloquially.
“As such, we expected that the hallucinatory dimensions of experience would correlate the highest with psilocybin’s hyperconnected pattern. However, hallucinatory experience had a strong, but weaker correlation with this pattern than ego-modifying experiences.
“This led us to formulate the term ‘egotropic’ to draw attention to these ego-modifying effects as important, perhaps even more so than their hallucinogenic counterparts.”
Editor-in-Chief of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging Cameron S. Carter, MD, University of California Irvine, comments, “This study uses readily available resting state fMRI images acquired after psilocybin ingestion to provide new insights into the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the subjective and clinical effects of the drug.
“It sets the stage for future studies using other psychedelic agents to examine whether the dynamic connectivity effects reflect a general mechanism for the therapeutic effects of these compounds.
Lead investigator Athena Demertzi, PhD, Physiology of Cognition, GIGA-CRC In Vivo Imaging Center, University of Liège, adds, “We were pleasantly surprised to learn that the brain pattern of hyperconnected regions was further characterized by lower global signal amplitude, which works as a proxy to heightened cortical arousal.
“So far, this is the first time that such approximation of arousal levels using fMRI was attempted in psychedelic research. This might be an important correlation as we move towards a full characterization of brain states under psychedelics.”
She concludes, “Given the resurgence in research regarding the psychotherapeutic applications of psychedelic drugs, our results are pertinent to understanding how subjective experience under psychedelics influences beneficial clinical outcomes.
“Is the effect driven by ego-dissolution? By hallucinations? As such, our work exemplifies how the strong inter-relatedness between egotropic effects of moderate dose psilocybin and its hyperconnected brain pattern can inform clinical focus on specific aspects of phenomenology, such as ego-dissolutions.
“With this information, healthcare professionals may learn how to best engineer psychedelic therapy sessions to produce the best clinical outcomes.”
About this psilocybin and neuroscience research news
Author: Eileen Leahy
Source: Elsevier
Contact: Eileen Leahy – Elsevier
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Dynamic Functional Hyperconnectivity after Psilocybin Intake Is Primarily Associated with Oceanic Boundlessness” by Athena Demertzi et al. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
Abstract
Dynamic Functional Hyperconnectivity after Psilocybin Intake Is Primarily Associated with Oceanic Boundlessness
Background
Psilocybin is a widely studied psychedelic substance, which leads to the psychedelic state, a specific altered state of consciousness. To date, the relationship between the psychedelic state’s neurobiological and experiential patterns remains under-characterized as they are often analyzed separately. We investigated the relationship between neurobiological and experiential patterns after psilocybin by focusing on the link between dynamic cerebral connectivity and retrospective questionnaire assessment.
Methods
Healthy participants were randomized to receive either psilocybin (n=22) or placebo (n=27) and scanned for six minutes in eyes open resting state during the peak subjective drug effect (102 minutes post-treatment) in ultra-high field 7T MRI. The 5D-ASC Rating Scale was administered 360 minutes after drug intake.
Results
Under psilocybin, there were alterations across all dimensions of the 5D-ASC scale, and widespread increases in averaged brain functional connectivity. Further time-varying functional connectivity analysis unveiled a recurrent hyperconnected pattern characterized by low BOLD signal amplitude, suggesting heightened cortical arousal. In terms of neuro-experiential links, canonical correlation analysis showed higher transition probabilities to the hyperconnected pattern with feelings of oceanic boundlessness, and secondly with visionary restructuralization.
Conclusions
Psilocybin generates profound alterations both at the brain and at the experiential level. We suggest that the brain’s tendency to enter a hyperconnected-hyperarousal pattern under psilocybin represents the potential to entertain variant mental associations. These findings illuminate the intricate interplay between brain dynamics and subjective experience under psilocybin, providing insights into the neurophysiology and neuro-experiential qualities of the psychedelic state.
