Dose-dependent changes in global brain activity and functional connectivity following exposure to psilocybin: a BOLD MRI study in awake rats
Frontiers in Neuroscience May 1, 2025 Evan Fuini, Arnold Chang, Josh Edwards et al. 6 citations
Psilocybin, a hallucinogen, produces dose-dependent increases in brain activity in awake rats, particularly in the somatosensory cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus. Female rats showed greater activation than males at the 0.3 mg/kg dose in thalamic and basal ganglia regions. The drug also caused a global increase in functional connectivity, especially hyperconnectivity to the cerebellum. Higher doses activated circuits involved in sensory filtering and motor organization, such as the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuit and claustrum. However, the direction of BOLD signal changes and neural network activity patterns differed from those reported in human studies.