Trips and neurotransmitters: Discovering principled patterns across 6850 hallucinogenic experiences.
Sci Adv March 16, 2022 Galen Ballentine, Samuel Freesun Friedman, Danilo Bzdok 66 citations
Psychedelics likely alter consciousness by disrupting the usual hierarchy between higher-level association cortex and incoming sensory signals. Analyzing 6,850 free-form testimonials about 27 drugs alongside 40 neurotransmitter receptor subtypes and their gene expression maps in the brain, the authors found that drug-induced changes in awareness correspond to cortex-wide distributions of receptor density. Each receptor-experience factor spanned a continuum from higher-level association to sensory input, possibly reflecting a collapse of hierarchical order among large-scale brain networks. The framework reveals the semantic structure underlying diverse drug experiences and links it directly to brain anatomy.