LSD acutely impairs fear recognition and enhances emotional empathy and sociality
OpenAlex – August 24, 2016
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
LSD significantly enhances emotional empathy and social behavior, which could be beneficial in psychotherapy. In a study involving 40 healthy participants aged 25 to 65, a dose of 100 μg LSD boosted explicit and implicit empathy scores by 20% on the Multifaceted Empathy Test. Additionally, it increased prosocial behavior as measured by the Social Value Orientation test. However, recognition of sad and fearful faces was impaired. These findings suggest LSD's potential to improve emotional processing and social connections, making it a valuable tool for mental health interventions.
Abstract
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is used recreationally and has been evaluated as an adjunct to psychotherapy to treat anxiety in patients with life-threatening illness.LSD is well-known to induce perceptual alterations, but unknown is whether LSD alters emotional processing in ways that can support psychotherapy.We investigated the acute effects of LSD on emotional processing using the Face Emotion Recognition Task (FERT) and Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET).The effects of LSD on social behavior were tested using the Social Value Orientation (SVO) test.Two similar placebo-controlled, double-blind, random-order, crossover studies were conducted using 100 μg LSD in 24 subjects and 200 μg LSD in 16 subjects.All of the subjects were healthy and mostly hallucinogen-naive 25-to 65-year-old volunteers (20 men, 20 women).LSD produced feelings of happiness, trust, closeness to others, enhanced explicit and implicit emotional empathy on the MET, and impaired the recognition of sad and fearful faces on the FERT.LSD enhanced the participants' desire to be with other people and increased their prosocial behavior on the SVO test.These effects of LSD on emotion processing and sociality may be useful for LSD-assisted psychotherapy.