The entropic heart: Tracking the psychedelic state via heart rate dynamics
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) November 9, 2023 Fernando E. Rosas, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Christopher Timmermann et al. 14 citations preprint
Autonomic signals can reveal aspects of subjective and neural states. A Bayesian framework estimated heart rate entropy under psychedelics. Across four drugs—LSD, DMT, psilocybin, and ketamine—mean heart rate, high-frequency heart rate variability, and heart rate entropy consistently increased during the psychedelic experience. These changes predicted various dimensions of the experience. Heart rate entropy increases correlated with brain entropy increases, while other autonomic markers did not. Cost-efficient autonomic measures can reveal detail about subjective and brain states, opening new research avenues in neuroscience.