Brain entropy during a psychedelic trip tracks later gains in insight and well-being
The more disordered a person’s brain activity became during their first psilocybin trip, the more their well-being tended to improve a month later, according to a small, exploratory study of healthy volunteers.
A study published in Nature Communications found that a single dose of psilocybin, the active compound in "magic mushrooms," leads to increased brain entropy, or irregular electrical activity, during a psychedelic trip. This heightened disorganized state, which occurs one to two hours after ingestion, correlates with improved well-being and psychological insight reported by participants a month later.
Researchers from Imperial College London monitored 28 healthy adults, who received a low-dose placebo and a high-dose psilocybin, in a controlled setting. The high-dose session demonstrated significant increases in brain entropy, accompanied by a drop in alpha waves, typical of relaxed wakefulness. A month after the high-dose session, researchers observed possible alterations in the brain's white matter, the nerve fibers connecting brain regions, specifically a decrease in water diffusion along pathways linking the prefrontal cortex to deeper subcortical areas.
These changes were not observed following the placebo dose. While functional MRI scans showed weak, non-significant changes, network modularity—a measure of brain network division—decreased after the high-dose session, with larger decreases linked to greater well-being gains. Despite these promising findings, lasting changes in brain function remained largely absent.
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