Art as a Neuroplastogen

Summary

Pharmacological neuroplastogens like psilocybin and LSD enhance neural plasticity, aiding mood disorder therapy by allowing bottom-up prediction errors to reshape mental models. This study proposes that similar effects can be achieved non-pharmacologically through immersive algorithmic art, music, and live performance, all designed to sustain structured prediction error within an optimal compressibility range. These modalities could evoke altered states of consciousness comparable to those induced by psychedelics, with plans for EEG and questionnaire comparisons.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Pharmacological neuroplastogens---psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, ketamine---open transient windows of enhanced neural plasticity that can catalyze therapeutic change in mood disorders. Their mechanism, in the language of predictive processing, is to flatten high-level priors so that bottom-up prediction errors propagate freely and remodel the agent's generative model. We have argued, from first principles within the Kolmogorov Theory (KT) framework, that the same computational regime can be elicited non-pharmacologically, through immersive algorithmic art held in a Goldilocks zone of compressibility. {} is the closed-loop digital therapeutic that operationalizes this idea for adolescent depression. This brief gives a short, pedagogic account of that argument and then extends it to two adjacent domains: (i)~music, where harmonic tension is already wired into {} as a prediction-error scaffold; and (ii)~live performance with an explicit chaos$ $harmony narrative arc, of the kind recently presented by G.~Foffani in Rome. We argue that all three modalities---algorithmic visuals, harmonic music, and structured live performance---fall under one mechanistic umbrella: they sustain structured prediction error in the Goldilocks zone, transiently flatten the dynamical landscape in the sense of Neural Geometrodynamics, and push subjective phenomenology into territory that the Five-Dimensional Altered States of Consciousness ( ) and Mystical Experience ( ) instruments have historically reserved for psychedelics such as MDA, psilocybin, and LSD. We close with concrete EEG and questionnaire bridges that would let the three modalities be compared head-to-head.

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