After a high dose of psilocybin, the brain desynchronizes at a massive scale, causing loss of our sense of self, time, and space. This may drive the burst of plasticity caused by psychedelics. The next day, brain activity has largely returned to normal, but an echo remains – a reset of circuits critical to the sense of self. Our study is out today in @Nature

RT @MitoPsychoBio: Deeply deficient system Medicine is great at saving lives with surgeries, antibiotics and other emergency-type tools B…

RT @bingespresso: I keep thinking of this post. That desync essentially feels like death and this is when you see your primordial brain and…

Okay okay I’ll go first - Artsy fartsy Now your turn…

RT @RickZeifman: Excited to share this paper led by Broc Pagni Multidimensional Personality Changes Following Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy…

“Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.” Moby Dick

No one wants to answer? FINE. I'll just do what ChatGPT says... To reliably evoke responses in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) and pre-genual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC), an emotional processing or reward-related task paradigm would be effective, as these regions are particularly responsive to affective, reward, and social stimuli. Here are a few fMRI task paradigms that could reliably activate these regions: 1. Emotional Faces or Social Feedback Task Description: This paradigm presents facial expressions that convey various emotions (e.g., happy, sad, fearful, and neutral). Participants may passively view or be instructed to identify or rate the intensity of each emotion. Targeted Activation: The sgACC and pgACC are responsive to emotionally salient stimuli, especially those with negative or socially evaluative content (e.g., sad or angry faces), as these areas are involved in emotional regulation and social sensitivity. Design Tip: Use a rapid event-related design with randomized jittered intervals to isolate responses to different emotional categories. 2. Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) Task Description: This reward-based task involves cues signaling potential monetary gain, loss, or neutral outcomes, with participants needing to respond quickly to obtain the reward or avoid a loss. Targeted Activation: The pgACC responds to anticipated rewards, while the sgACC is active during loss or negative feedback, making this task effective for differentiating responses to both reward and punishment. Design Tip: Include both anticipation and outcome phases with clear feedback for gains and losses, as this distinction is valuable for activating the cingulate cortex. 3. Affective Picture Viewing Task Description: Participants view images from categories that evoke positive (e.g., happy scenes), neutral (e.g., household items), or negative emotions (e.g., aversive or distressing scenes). Targeted Activation: The sgACC is often engaged by aversive or emotionally negative stimuli, while the pgACC may be activated by positive and socially relevant images. Design Tip: Use images with high emotional intensity from databases like the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), and intersperse with neutral images for a strong contrast in affective response. 4. Self-Referential Processing Task Description: This task requires participants to judge words or phrases as "self-descriptive" or "non-self-descriptive," engaging self-referential processing and emotional introspection. Targeted Activation: Both the sgACC and pgACC are involved in self-referential thought and emotional regulation, particularly when assessing emotionally loaded self-relevant content. Design Tip: Use a mix of positive, negative, and neutral traits or statements about personality to elicit differential engagement in the ACC. 5. Social Exclusion (Cyberball) Task Description: In this task, participants play a virtual ball-tossing game and experience social inclusion or exclusion (e.g., being "left out" by other players). Targeted Activation: Social rejection typically activates the sgACC, which is sensitive to social pain and distress, while pgACC responds to social inclusion or positive affiliation cues. Design Tip: Include randomized periods of social exclusion and inclusion to observe changes in cingulate response associated with social interactions. Tips for Reliable Activation: Jittered Timing: Use jittered inter-trial intervals to separate event-related responses. Task Engagement: Ensure the task engages participants emotionally, as the sgACC and pgACC are more responsive to personally or socially meaningful stimuli. High Contrast: Use stimuli with strong positive, neutral, or negative contrasts to optimize signal detection in these regions. These paradigms have been shown to robustly engage the sgACC and pgACC and are well-suited for investigating emotion regulation, reward processing, and social cognition in fMRI studies.

RT @trikomes: Rigorously conducted clinical trials always include a placebo control. Give half the subjects a drug, the other half a placeb…

New scientific evidence shows that psychedelics disrupt the self, resetting the mind.

Hahaha well so much for participant anonymity. JK, you already crushed an NPR interview. Was great getting to know you during the study Scott. Hope you are well!

Oh and foraging of course!

I hear you. I get it. And TBH, I’m kind of okay with it. By most attempts to measure, happiness is higher in USA. It may look like one side is better to you, but it isn’t. Not much difference in wealth. It’s just a different cultures. More independent and individualistic. There’s a lot of stress, anxiety and insecurity with that level of perfection, conformation and expectation.

RT @PPetridisMD: Psilocybin-assisted therapy provides more than just relief from anxiety and depression in patients with cancer. Our analy…