The entropic tongue: Disorganization of natural language under LSD.
Conscious Cogn December 8, 2020 Camila Sanz, Carla Pallavicini, Facundo Carrillo et al. 34 citations
Language produced under the influence of LSD shows increased entropy and reduced semantic coherence, consistent with a state of heightened neural entropy. Non-semantic analysis of speech organization revealed increased verbosity and a reduced lexicon, changes more similar to manic psychoses than to schizophrenia, as confirmed by direct comparison with reference samples. Features related to language organization allowed machine learning classifiers to identify speech under LSD with accuracy comparable to that obtained by examining semantic content. These results provide a quantitative characterization of disorganized natural speech as a landmark feature of the psychedelic state.