Summary: A new study reports microdosing psychedelics may enhance creative problem solving without risk of hallucinations, or trips, associated with taking high doses of the substances.
Source: Springer.
The use of minute doses of magic mushrooms and truffles containing psychedelic substances could induce a state of unconstrained thought that may produce more new, creative ideas. “Microdosing” in this way may allow people to experience the creative benefits of psychedelic drugs without the risk of the so-called “bad trips” that often come with high doses of such substances. This is according to a new study in the Springer-branded journal Psychopharmacology which is the official journal of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society (EBPS). The research was led by Luisa Prochazkova of Leiden University in The Netherlands and is the first study of its kind to experimentally investigate the cognitive-enhancing effects of microdosing on a person’s brain function within a natural setting.
Taking a tiny fraction of a normal dose of psychedelic substances is becoming a trend in some professional circles because this is thought to stimulate brain function and enhance mental flexibility and creativity. However, experimental research that moves away from anecdotal evidence is still rare.
In this study, Prochazkova and her colleagues investigated how a microdose of a psychedelic substance affected the cognitive brain function of 36 people who were present at an event organized by the Psychedelic Society of The Netherlands. During the experimental phase, participants were set three tasks before and after they consumed on average 0.37 grams of dried truffles. The tests assessed their convergent thinking (the identification of a single solution to a problem), their fluid intelligence (the capacity to reason and solve new problems) and their divergent thinking (the ability to recognize many possible solutions). Afterwards, the researchers analyzed the active substances present in the truffles consumed by participants.
After taking the microdose of truffles, the researchers found that participants’ convergent thinking abilities were improved. Participants also had more ideas about how to solve a presented task, and were more fluent, flexible and original in the possibilities they came up with. Microdosing with psychedelic substances therefore improved both the divergent and convergent thinking of participants.
These findings are in line with earlier studies that found high doses of psychedelics can enhance creative performance. The fact that participants’ intelligence scores and general analytical abilities did not change suggests that the effect of the truffles is rather selective, and more to the benefit of a person’s creative domain.
“Taken together, our results suggest that consuming a microdose of truffles allowed participants to create more out-of-the-box alternative solutions for a problem, thus providing preliminary support for the assumption that microdosing improves divergent thinking,” explains Prochazkova. “Moreover, we also observed an improvement in convergent thinking, that is, increased performance on a task that requires the convergence on one single correct or best solution.”
Prochazkova hopes that these findings will stimulate further research into the beneficial effects of microdosing psychedelics. “Apart from its benefits as a potential cognitive enhancement technique, microdosing could be further investigated for its therapeutic efficacy to help individuals who suffer from rigid thought patterns or behavior such as individuals with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder,” she explains.
Source: Elizabeth Hawkins – Springer
Publisher: Organized by NeuroscienceNews.com.
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Open access research for “Exploring the effect of microdosing psychedelics on creativity in an open-label natural setting” by Luisa Prochazkova, Dominique P. LippeltLorenza S. Colzato, Martin Kuchar, Zsuzsika Sjoerds, and Bernhard Hommel in Psychopharmacology. Published October 25 2018.
doi:10.1007/s00213-018-5049-7
[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]Springer”Microdoses of Psychedelics May Enhance Creative Problem Solving.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 25 October 2018.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/psychedelic-multidose-creativity-10087/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]Springer(2018, October 25). Microdoses of Psychedelics May Enhance Creative Problem Solving. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved October 25, 2018 from https://neurosciencenews.com/psychedelic-multidose-creativity-10087/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]Springer”Microdoses of Psychedelics May Enhance Creative Problem Solving.” https://neurosciencenews.com/psychedelic-multidose-creativity-10087/ (accessed October 25, 2018).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]
Abstract
Exploring the effect of microdosing psychedelics on creativity in an open-label natural setting
Introduction
Taking microdoses (a mere fraction of normal doses) of psychedelic substances, such as truffles, recently gained popularity, as it allegedly has multiple beneficial effects including creativity and problem-solving performance, potentially through targeting serotonergic 5-HT2A receptors and promoting cognitive flexibility, crucial to creative thinking. Nevertheless, enhancing effects of microdosing remain anecdotal, and in the absence of quantitative research on microdosing psychedelics, it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions on that matter. Here, our main aim was to quantitatively explore the cognitive-enhancing potential of microdosing psychedelics in healthy adults.
Methods
During a microdosing event organized by the Dutch Psychedelic Society, we examined the effects of psychedelic truffles (which were later analyzed to quantify active psychedelic alkaloids) on two creativity-related problem-solving tasks: the Picture Concept Task assessing convergent thinking and the Alternative Uses Task assessing divergent thinking. A short version of the Ravens Progressive Matrices task assessed potential changes in fluid intelligence. We tested once before taking a microdose and once while the effects were expected to be manifested.
Results
We found that both convergent and divergent thinking performance was improved after a non-blinded microdose, whereas fluid intelligence was unaffected.
Conclusion
While this study provides quantitative support for the cognitive-enhancing properties of microdosing psychedelics, future research has to confirm these preliminary findings in more rigorous placebo-controlled study designs. Based on these preliminary results, we speculate that psychedelics might affect cognitive metacontrol policies by optimizing the balance between cognitive persistence and flexibility. We hope this study will motivate future microdosing studies with more controlled designs to test this hypothesis.
