Psychedelics Restructure the Global Workspace of Consciousness
Psychoactive drugs profoundly alter consciousness, but the neural mechanisms by which they do so remain poorly understood. Global workspace theory may provide a framework for investigating these mechanisms. The global workspace, a candidate neural substrate of consciousness, is a set of brain regions that integrate and disseminate information to the rest of the brain. According to a recent model,…
Psychedelic substances, such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin, have been shown to significantly impact the brain's global workspace, a network of regions responsible for integrating and distributing information. A recent study analyzed the effects of various psychedelic drugs on this network using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data.
The findings reveal that classic psychedelics increase the number of "gateways," or integrators, in the frontoparietal control and dorsal attention networks. Conversely, MDMA and amphetamine reduce the number of gateways in the visual and somatomotor networks. These drugs also exhibit distinct patterns of "synergy" and "redundancy," which are unique to classic psychedelics compared to other substances.
Moreover, the variations in synergy and redundancy correspond with the subjective effects experienced by users of these drugs. The study provides the first direct evidence that psychedelics can alter the synergistic and redundant interactions within the global workspace of consciousness.
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