Research library / Brain imaging study

Increased Global Functional Connectivity Correlates with LSD-Induced Ego Dissolution

Tagliazucchi E, Roseman L, Kaelen M, et al. Current Biology 2016;26(8):1043-50

This was described as the first modern brain-imaging study of LSD's acute effects in humans. Healthy volunteers were scanned with fMRI on LSD and on placebo. Under LSD, several higher-order brain regions and the thalamus became more connected with the rest of the brain, and these regions lined up with where serotonin 2A receptors, the main target of psychedelics, are most dense. Networks that normally work fairly separately talked to each other more. People whose brains showed bigger increases in this global connectivity also reported stronger feelings of 'ego dissolution', a loss of the sense of a separate self. The study maps brain changes and their link to experience; it does not test any treatment, and the association it reports does not prove cause and effect.