AI helped map ‘trips’ in the brain — which could improve psychiatric treatments
Researchers looked at how 6,000 psychedelic experiences corresponded to specific regions of the brain
Mapping ‘trips’ in the brain
Every psychedelic functions differently in the body, and each of the subjective experiences these drugs create have different therapeutic effects.Mystical type experiences, or feelings of unity and oneness with the world, for example, are associated with decreases in depression and anxiety. Knowing how each psychedelic creates these specific effects in the body can help cliniciansoptimize their therapeutic use.
To better understand how these subjective effects manifest in the brain, we analyzed over 6,000 written testimonials of hallucinogenic experiences fromErowid Center, an organization that collects and provides information about psychoactive substances. We transformed these testimonials into what’s called abag-of-words model, which breaks down a given text into individual words and counts how many times each word appears. We then paired the most commonly used words linked to each psychedelic with receptors in the brain that are known to bind to each drug. After usingan algorithmto extract the most common subjective experiences associated with these word-receptor pairs, we mapped these experiences onto different brain regions by matching them to the types of receptors present in each area.
We found both new links and patterns that confirm what’s known in the research literature. For example, changes in sensory perception were associated with aserotonin receptorin the visual cortex of the brain, which binds to amoleculethat helps regulate mood and memory. Feelings of transcendence were connected to dopamine and opioid receptors in thesalience network, a collection of brain regions involved in managing sensory and emotional input. Auditory hallucinations were linked to a number of receptors spread throughout theauditory cortex.
Our findings also align with theleading hypothesisthat psychedelics temporarily reducetop-down executive function, or cognitive processes involved in inhibition, attention and memory, among others, while amplifying brain regions involved in sensory experience.
Why it matters
The U.S. is going through a profoundmental health crisisthat has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet there have been no truly new psychiatric drug treatments since Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most common type of antidepressants, of the1980s.
Our study shows that it’s possible to map the diverse and wildly subjective psychedelic experiences to specific regions in the brain. These insights may lead to new ways to combine existing or yet to be discovered compounds to produce desired treatment effects for a range of psychiatric conditions.
PychiatristStanislav Groffamously proposed, “[P]sychedelics, used responsibly and with proper caution, would be for psychiatry what the microscope is to the study of biology and medicine or the telescope for astronomy.” As psychedelics and other hallucinogens become more commonly used clinically and culturally, we believe more research willfurther illuminate the biological basisof the experiences they invoke and help realize their potential.
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This article byGalen Ballentine, Resident in Psychiatry,SUNY Downstate Health Sciences UniversityandSam Friedman, Machine Learning Scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT &,Harvard University, is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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