Psilocybin Prolongs the Neurovascular Coupling Response in Mouse Visual Cortex
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) July 31, 2025 Rick Zirkel, Matthew Isaacson, Clara Liao et al. 3 citations preprint
Psilocybin prolongs increases in visual stimulus-evoked capillary blood flow in the mouse visual cortex without altering stimulus-evoked neural activity. This effect was reduced by pretreatment with a 5-HT2A receptor antagonist. Multi-modal widefield imaging confirmed extended vascular responses in surface vessels with no observed effect on population neural response. Computational simulations showed that prolonged neurovascular coupling responses can produce spurious increases in BOLD-based measures of functional connectivity. These findings demonstrate that psilocybin broadens neurovascular responses in the brain, highlighting the need to account for these effects when interpreting human neuroimaging data of psychedelic drug action.