Scientists identify ‘neural fingerprint’ of psychedelic drugs in the brain | Drugs
Scientists have identified a distinctive signature produced by psychedelic drugs in the human brain when users experience their mind-altering effects.
The “neural fingerprint” of psychedelic travel has been spotted among hundreds of brain scans of people on LSD, psilocybin, DMT, mescaline and ayahuasca, highlighting a common impact on brain behavior.
The discovery comes from a major study that combined 11 brain imaging datasets from around the world in an effort to build a reliable picture of how substances temporarily rewire the brain.
This knowledge is increasingly important as researchers study drugs in clinical trials as potential therapies for serious mental health and neurological conditions such as depression, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“These five drugs that have never been analyzed together for their impact on the brain have some common effects in how they change brain function,” said study lead author Dr. Danilo Bzdok of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
“The five drugs dissolve the common order, the usual hierarchy of brain systems,” he added. “They flatten the hierarchy and that probably underlies what some describe as this raw access to one’s own consciousness.”
Scientists have long sought to understand how psychedelics work in the brain to produce hallucinations and what some describe as ego dissolution, when people feel their sense of identity disintegrating. But many studies have been limited, making it difficult to draw reliable conclusions.
Writing in Nature Medicine, Bzdok and colleagues analyzed more than 500 brain scans from 267 people in five countries in what they say is the largest study of psychedelics and the human brain to date.
Although there are some differences in how medications change brain activity, there is considerable overlap in their impact on how brain regions communicate with each other. The most striking effect was stronger communication between brain networks that engage in higher-level thinking and more primitive networks related to vision and sensation.
“There is a wild interaction between brain systems – they communicate enormously with each other,” Bzdok said. “It’s about excessive interaction between brain systems.”
Other changes were spotted deeper in the brain, in regions linked to habits, learning and movement, the study found. Contrary to some previous claims, the study found little reliable evidence that certain individual brain networks “disintegrate” under the influence of psychedelics.
According to Bzdok, this work helps strengthen research on psychedelics, which is crucial if these drugs are to become widespread therapies for mental health problems.
“We have seen that this area is emerging, and it is very important, but they are on shaky ground; they are building houses on matchsticks,” Bzdok said. “That’s why we launched the study with the ambition of providing a solid foundation. »
Dr Emmanuel Stamatakis, co-lead author of the study from the University of Cambridge, said: “This field is evolving rapidly. If psychedelic research is to mature responsibly, it needs large-scale, coordinated evidence.”
