Psychedelic Drugs and Brain Dynamics: Unveiling Turbulent Signatures and Control Energy Landscape Flattening

COEX 

Psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin alter subjective experience through serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) receptor agonism, resulting in increased brain entropy. We propose this heightened entropy reflects a flattening of the brain's control energy landscape. Using fMRI data, we show that LSD and psilocybin reduce control energy for brain state transitions, leading to more state changes and increased entropy. Analysis tying 5-HT2A receptor distribution to control energy supports this link. Our study reveals how psychedelics facilitate state transitions and diverse brain activity and demonstrates the potential of receptor-informed network control theory. Additionally, psychedelics show promise as treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders. We explored how LSD and psilocybin impact the brain's functional hierarchy using a novel turbulence framework. Both psychedelics produced distinct turbulence-based changes, affecting higher-level networks, especially the default mode network. These findings support the hypothesis that psychedelics modulate the brain's functional hierarchy and offer quantification for two different psychedelics, with potential implications for therapy.