Psilocybin-induced modulation of visual salience processing
Neuroscience of Consciousness – January 01, 2025
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Psilocybin profoundly alters conscious visual perception. In a study with 23 participants, high psilocybin doses significantly increased fixation on salient image regions and reduced eye movement distances during natural scene viewing, precisely measured by eye tracking. This suggests heightened visual processing sensitivity to salient cues, fundamentally impacting gaze behavior. Utilizing a deep learning model for visual attention and electroencephalography, findings indicate psilocybin shifts attentional dynamics within cognitive psychology, making visual scanning more exploratory and less predictable. This illuminates how psychedelics reshape visual perception.
Abstract
Abstract Psychedelic compounds significantly reshape conscious perception, yet the implications of these alterations for complex visual-guided behaviors remain poorly understood. We investigated how psilocybin modulates visual salience processing during natural scene perception. Twenty-three participants completed eye-tracking tasks under self-blinded low and high doses of psilocybin, in a naturalistic design with experimental conditions unknown to participants and researchers. Subjects viewed natural scenes while their gaze patterns were recorded and analyzed in relation to normative computational saliency maps generated using a deep learning model of visual attention. Results revealed increased fixation on salient image regions and reduced inter-fixation distance under the high-dose condition, suggesting heightened sensitivity to visual salience and more localized gaze behavior. The Shannon entropy of fixations on high-saliency regions indicated a more exploratory and less predictable visual scanning of the images. Complementary resting-state electroencephalography recordings showed broadband spectral power reductions and increased Lempel-Ziv complexity, with delta power negatively correlating with salience metrics. These findings indicate that psilocybin induces a shift in attentional dynamics, altering gaze behavior, and salience processing during natural scene perception.