Journal of Psychopharmacology
August 1, 2022
Paweł Orłowski, Anastasia Ruban, Jan Szczypiński et al.
40 citations
People who have used psychedelics more times over their lifetime tend to show greater positive emotional reactions and lower negative emotional reactions, along with more reflection and internal self-awareness, and less rumination and concern about how others see them. These associations were explained largely by the intensity of past ego-dissolution and mystical experiences during psychedelic use. The findings suggest that regular naturalistic use of psychedelics is linked to adaptive, lasting changes in emotional reactivity and self-consciousness, which may underlie previously observed increases in well-being among users.
Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology
November 27, 2023
Jakub Greń, Ingmar Gorman, Anastasia Ruban et al.
27 citations
Psychedelic integration (PI) refers to practices that aim to minimize harms or maximize benefits after psychedelic use. Although PI is considered essential in psychedelic-assisted therapy, existing models lack empirical support and are not evidence-based. With psychedelic use increasing, the article calls for scientific efforts to develop, examine, and evaluate PI methods. It summarizes current literature, suggests research avenues, and discusses limitations and challenges of PI-focused research.
Neuropsychiatria i Neuropsychologia
January 1, 2018
Anastasia Ruban, Aleksandra Kołodziej
20 citations
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy may work by reducing activity and functional connectivity within the default-mode network (DMN), a brain system linked to self-referential thought and rumination. The review suggests that psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD temporarily disrupt DMN integrity, allowing for a more flexible, less rigid pattern of brain activity that could help patients break out of maladaptive thought patterns. This neural change is proposed as a key indicator of therapeutic effectiveness for conditions such as depression, anxiety, and addiction. The authors call for further research to confirm the causal relationship between DMN modulation and clinical outcomes.
Psychophysiology
August 1, 2024
Paweł Orłowski, Justyna Hobot, Anastasia Ruban et al.
5 citations
Regular naturalistic use of classic psychedelics does not appear to alter long-term neural representations of the self, but it may affect how attentional resources are allocated to task-relevant stimuli. In a cross-sectional study comparing 56 experienced psychedelics users (15 or more lifetime uses) with 57 nonusers, no difference was found in the P300 brain response to hearing one's own name, a stimulus that robustly activates self-representation. However, psychedelics users showed a larger P300 response to other people's names and a smaller increase in P300 amplitude when processing task-relevant target names compared to nonusers. These results suggest that while self-representation remains unchanged, regular psychedelic use might subtly shift attentional processing.
Journal of psychoactive drugs
February 13, 2025
Stanisław Adamczyk, Małgorzata Paczyńska, Anastasia Ruban et al.
2 citations
Psychedelics can cause profound changes in cognition, emotion, and perception, but the intensity of these effects varies widely. A cross-sectional online survey of 862 psychedelics users (701 had used LSD and 553 had used psilocybin mushrooms) examined how internal and external contextual factors relate to the intensity of ego dissolution. Those who used psychedelics for spiritual or self-healing purposes reported more intense ego dissolution, while those motivated by curiosity reported less intense experiences. The social context and physical environment were not strongly linked to the reported intensity. This suggests that internal mindset, rather than external setting, may be more influential in naturalistic use.
Progress in neuro-psychopharmacology & biological psychiatry
January 10, 2025
Anastasia Ruban, Mikołaj Magnuski, Justyna Hobot et al.
1 citation
People who use psychedelics in natural settings show weaker increases in alpha and beta brainwave power when thinking about themselves, compared to non-users, especially in regions like the posterior cingulate cortex that handle self-related information and memory. However, these differences were not replicated in a second, smaller dataset, limiting confidence in the finding. The results contribute to ongoing debate about how long psychedelic effects last in brain circuits linked to self-processing and question the specific role of default-mode network hubs in such changes.
December 28, 2023
Paweł Orlowski, Justyna Hobot, Anastasia Ruban et al.
1 citation
preprint
Regular, naturalistic use of classic psychedelics (15 or more lifetime experiences) does not appear to alter the brain's basic representation of self, as measured by the P300 event-related potential response to one's own name. In a cross-sectional study comparing 56 experienced psychedelics users with 57 non-users, no difference was found in P300 amplitude evoked by the participant's own name. However, psychedelics users showed a smaller increase in P300 amplitude when processing a task-relevant target name compared to non-users, suggesting that repeated psychedelic use might affect how attentional resources are allocated to task-relevant stimuli rather than changing the long-term neural representation of self.
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition
October 30, 2025
Anastasia Ruban, Michiel van Elk
Psychedelic experiences are shaped by culturally prevalent narratives rather than revealing unmediated insights. Psychedelics operate as non-specific amplifiers that magnify pre-existing beliefs within cultural feedback loops linking cultural set and setting, individual expectations, experience, and its articulation back into culture. This view reinterprets apparent disruptive effects as context-dependent intensifications. The authors identify methodological and ideological obstacles to studying culture in psychedelic science and propose a mixed-methods program including reflexivity, discourse analytics, neurophenomenology, and naturalistic cohort comparisons to operationalize cultural variables. Recognizing culture's constitutive role has ethical and epistemic consequences, including caution regarding metaphysical claims and attention to how psychedelics induce change in clinical settings.
October 9, 2023
Paweł Orlowski, Justyna Hobot, Anastasia Ruban et al.
preprint
People who regularly use psychedelic substances in naturalistic settings show reduced early neural responses to negative emotional faces compared to non-users. Electroencephalography measured event-related potentials while participants viewed faces expressing anger, sadness, happiness, or neutrality. Experienced psychedelic users (56 people) had significantly lower N200 amplitudes when processing fearful faces than non-users (55 people), indicating weaker automatic emotional reactivity. Differences also appeared in N170 and N200 components between groups for fearful faces. Later components related to attention (P200, P300) did not differ between groups. Naturalistic psychedelic use may dampen early, automatic processing of negative emotional stimuli.
Arabixiv (OSF Preprints)
September 23, 2021
Paweł Orlowski, Anastasia Ruban, Jan Szczypiński et al.
preprint
People who have used psychedelics more times over their lives report greater positive emotional reactions, less negative emotional reactivity, more reflection and internal self-awareness, and less rumination and concern about how others see them. These links are largely explained by how intense their past ego-dissolution and mystical experiences were. The findings suggest that regular naturalistic psychedelic use is associated with lasting, adaptive changes in emotional reactivity and self-consciousness, which may help explain why users often report higher well-being.