Effective connectivity of emotion and cognition under psilocybin
OpenAlex – September 09, 2022
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
The hallucinogen Psilocybin profoundly alters brain connectivity, offering insights into its therapeutic potential. In a randomized trial of 24 healthy adults receiving 0.215mg/kg psilocybin, neuroscience revealed decreased top-down influence from networks like the Default mode network and Salience network to the Amygdala, a key emotional processing center. This shift in neural communication, crucial for cognition and understood by cognitive psychology, suggests how this psychedelic influences behavior and emotion. These Psychedelics and Drug Studies highlight the Amygdala's role in psychology.
Abstract
Abstract Classic psychedelics alter sense of self and patterns of self-related thought. These changes are hypothesised to underlie their therapeutic efficacy across internalising pathologies such as addiction and depression. Using resting-state functional MRI images from a randomised, double blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 24 healthy adults under 0.215mg/kg psilocybin, we investigated how psilocybin modulates the effective connectivity between resting state networks and the amygdala that are involved in the appraisal and regulation of emotion and association with clinical symptoms. The networks included the default mode network (DMN), salience network (SN) and central executive network (CEN). Psilocybin decreased top-down effective connectivity from the resting state networks to the amygdala and decreased effective connectivity within the DMN and SN, while the within CEN effective connectivity increased. Effective connectivity changes were also associated with altered emotion and meaning under psilocybin. Our findings identify changes to cognitive-emotional connectivity associated with the subjective effects of psilocybin and the attenuation of the amygdala signal as a potential biomarker of psilocybin’s therapeutic efficacy.