Effects of the Hallucinogen Psilocybin on Covert Orienting of Visual Attention in Humans
Neuropsychobiology January 1, 2002 Euphrosyne Gouzoulis‐mayfrank, B. Thelen, Stefanie Maier et al. 69 citations
Psilocybin, a serotonergic hallucinogen, and the ecstasy-like drug MDE both slowed reaction times in a spatial attention task, while methamphetamine did not. Psilocybin caused especially slow responses to invalid cues at short intervals and a failure to inhibit responses to valid cues at long intervals for right visual field targets. These patterns resemble bilateral attention disengagement and a lateralized impairment of inhibition of return seen in acute psychotic states. The study used a double-blind design with 8 healthy volunteers per group. Limitations include small sample size, and the authors call for larger studies with other hallucinogens to explore links between visuospatial attention dysfunction and psychosis.