Brain activity during magic mushrooms trip mirrors dreaming

The brain displays a similar pattern of activity during a mind-expanding drug trip as it does during dreams suggests new research into psilocybin. The study published in Human Brain Mapping examined the effects of the psychedelic chemical – found in magic mushrooms – using brain scans from 15 volunteers injected with the drug while in the fMRI scanner. They studied variation in the amplitude of fluctuations in the blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal, which tracks activity in the brain. Activity in the more primitive brain network associated with emotional thinking became more pronounced with several different areas – the hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex – active at the same time. This pattern is similar to that seen in people dreaming. Volunteers had more disjointed and uncoordinated activity in the brain network linked to high-level thinking, including self-consciousness. “What we have done in this research is begin to identify the biological basis of the reported mind expansion associated with psychedelic drugs,” said Dr Robin Carhart-Harris from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London. “I was fascinated to see similarities between the pattern of brain activity in a psychedelic state and the pattern of brain activity during dream sleep, especially as both involve primitive areas of the brain linked to emotions and memory. People often describe taking psilocybin as producing a dreamlike state and our findings have, for the first time, provided a physical representation for the experience in the brain.” Researchers computed the level of entropy for different networks during the psychedelic state and revealed an increase in the more primitive network, indicating an increased number of patterns of activity under psilocybin. Volunteers appeared to have a larger range of potential brain states available to them, pointing to a biophysical counterpart of the reported ‘mind expansion’. “A good way to understand how the brain works is to perturb the system in a marked and novel way,” said Dr Enzo Tagliazucchi from Goethe University. “Psychedelic drugs do precisely this and so are powerful tools for exploring what happens in the brain when consciousness is profoundly altered.” “It is the first time we have used these methods to look at brain imaging data and it has given some fascinating insight into how psychedelic drugs expand the mind. It really provides a window through which to study the doors of perception.” Enhanced repertoire of brain dynamical states during the psychedelic experience