Sporadic use of classic psychedelics and neuropsychological performance: A cross-sectional analysis.
Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry April 2, 2025 Simon Reiche, Tim Hirschfeld, Anna Lena Gröticke et al. 5 citations
People who have used psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD, or ayahuasca a mild to moderate number of times over their lives show broadly equivalent neuropsychological performance to non-users, but with a modest advantage in executive functions, particularly cognitive flexibility as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). In matched-pair analyses, users performed better on the WCST, and dose-response analyses within the user group found that greater lifetime use was positively associated with fewer total errors, perseverative responses, perseverative errors, non-perseverative errors, and more conceptual level responses. The study did not find any negative associations between sporadic psychedelic use and cognition.