Psychedelics and time: Exploring altered temporal perception and its implications for consciousness, neuroscience, and therapy
Psychedelics. October 21, 2025 Pu Jiang, Ci Lin, Xiaohui Wang
Psychedelics such as psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine, and lysergic acid diethylamide disrupt normal time perception, causing time dilation, compression, or loss of time. This opinion article integrates emerging cognitive neuroscience findings to discuss neural mechanisms behind these temporal anomalies. The authors suggest that psychedelic-induced time warps offer a new approach to studying brain correlates of the perception of the passage of time and conscious time perception. These changes may have therapeutic value for psychiatric disorders where altered time perception is central, including posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. Examining these time changes also highlights psychedelics' potential in shaping transformative cognitive-affective states and their clinical relevance.