Ayahuasca, a psychoactive Amazonian tea, contains DMT and other compounds. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study with 12 experienced users, ayahuasca reduced brain oscillations in delta, theta, and alpha frequency bands. The intensity of visual imagery correlated inversely with alpha-band current density in parietal and occipital cortex. Pretreatment with the 5-HT2A antagonist ketanserin blocked these neurophysiological changes, weakened the correlation between alpha activity and visual effects, and reduced subjective intensity. These results indicate that activation of the 5-HT2A receptor is central to ayahuasca's neurophysiological and visual effects in humans, despite the tea's chemical complexity.
Ayahuasca, a psychedelic containing the serotonergic 5-HT2A agonist N,N-dimethyltryptamine, temporarily disrupts neural hierarchies in the human brain by reducing top-down control and increasing bottom-up information transfer. In ten healthy male volunteers with prior psychedelic experience, transfer entropy analysis of brain oscillations showed that frontal sources decreased their influence over central, parietal, and occipital sites, while posterior sources increased their influence over anterior locations. Decreases in anterior-to-posterior transfer entropy correlated with the intensity of subjective effects, and the imbalance between anterior-to-posterior and posterior-to-anterior transfer entropy correlated with the degree of incapacitation experienced.