How Psychedelics Affect the Brain
The New York Times • • general
Key Points:
- Researchers have struggled to explain how psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin affect the human brain, despite evidence of their therapeutic benefits.
- Functional MRI studies have shown that these drugs disrupt connectivity patterns between brain regions, but interpretations of these scans have been inconsistent.
- An international consortium analyzed data from nearly a dozen brain imaging studies involving over 500 scans of 267 participants using five psychedelic substances.
- Their findings, published in Nature Medicine, indicate that psychedelics increase communication between brain areas that typically function independently, such as sensory processing and abstract thinking regions.
- This reduced separation between perception and cognition may explain the sensory distortions, mystical experiences, and ego dissolution reported during psychedelic sessions.
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