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.
Journal of cognitive neuroscience
June 1, 2024
Łucja Doradzińska, Michał Bola
12 citations
Visual awareness negativity (VAN), an early brain response measured by EEG, is not an attention-independent marker of conscious visual perception. Reanalysis of data from 41 participants showed that VAN's amplitude in the early time window (140-200 msec) depended heavily on attention; the effect of awareness disappeared for neutral faces that were task-irrelevant distractors. In a later window (200-350 msec), VAN appeared across all conditions but was larger for fearful or task-relevant faces. These findings challenge the idea that VAN purely reflects phenomenal awareness, instead showing it is influenced by both stimulus saliency and task demands.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2018
Michał Bola, Paweł Orłowski, Karolina Baranowska et al.
11 citations
Brain signal diversity is a marker of consciousness, being lower in unconscious states and higher during psychedelic states. This study tested whether increasing the information rate of speech would increase signal diversity, reflecting richer experience. Nineteen participants listened to an audiobook at five speeds (65–135% of original) and to backward (unintelligible) speech, plus a resting-state condition. EEG Lempel-Ziv diversity was measured. The main hypothesis was not supported: Bayes Factor showed evidence for no effect of speech speed on diversity. Resting-state diversity was greater than during any speech condition. Diversity also gradually declined over the experiment, possibly due to decreasing vigilance, suggesting that unconstrained rest allows more varied experiences like mind wandering.
Scientific Reports
March 1, 2023
Paweł Orłowski, Michał Bola
9 citations
Greater meaningfulness of visual stimuli is linked to higher Lempel–Ziv diversity of EEG signals, but the opposite effect occurs for auditory stimuli. Visual perception generally produces higher EEG diversity than auditory perception. Compared to resting state, meaningful visual stimuli increase EEG diversity while meaningful auditory stimuli decrease it. These findings show that brain signal diversity depends on the sensory modality being stimulated, so it cannot serve as a generic measure of the variability of conscious experience.
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.
Psychophysiology
July 1, 2025
Kinga Ciupińska, Marcin Koculak, Michał Bola et al.
2 citations
Comparing brain signals for visual and auditory conscious awareness in the same people shows that early awareness negativity (VAN and AAN) relates to awareness in both senses, but late positivity (LP) relates to awareness only for vision. Visual components also reach consciousness faster than auditory ones. No correlations between modalities in perceptual thresholds or ERP latencies and amplitudes suggest visual and auditory awareness mechanisms are largely separate and modality-specific, not tracking consciousness independently of content.
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.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
April 2, 2026
Maja Wójcik, Paweł Orłowski, Stanisław Adamczyk et al.
Long-term naturalistic psychedelic users who had abstained for at least 30 days showed largely no significant differences in brain oscillatory power, signal complexity, or network connectivity compared to non-users, contrary to patterns seen in acute administration studies. Complexity was unexpectedly lower in users during eyes-open conditions. Effective connectivity within and between key brain networks (Default Mode, Salience, Central Executive) showed no group differences after correction. These null findings suggest that repeated psychedelic use may not produce lasting neurophysiological changes detectable in resting-state EEG during abstinence, possibly due to homeostatic adaptation or individual variability.
Human Brain Mapping
April 1, 2026
Paweł Orłowski, Aleksandra Domagalik, Michał Bola
People who have used classic psychedelics many times (at least 10 lifetime uses) recognize angry facial expressions more quickly and accurately than nonusers, indicating enhanced processing of threat-related cues. In an fMRI study comparing 33 experienced psychedelic users with 34 matched nonusers, users showed reduced brain activation to angry faces in key limbic and salience network regions, along with heightened responses to happy expressions in parietal and sensorimotor cortices and increased precuneus activation to fearful expressions. Reduced differentiation between emotional categories appeared in two default mode network nodes. These neurofunctional changes suggest that naturalistic psychedelic use modulates emotional processing in ways that complement findings from 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.