Serotonergic Psychedelics Temporarily Modify Information Transfer in Humans
Alonso, Joan Francesc (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)
Romero, Sergio (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina)
Mañanas, Miquel Àngel (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)
Riba, Jordi (Institut d'Investigació Biomèdica Sant Pau)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Fecha:	2015
Resumen:	Psychedelics induce intense modifications in the sensorium, the sense of "self," and the experience of reality. Despite advances in our understanding of the molecular and cellular level mechanisms of these drugs, knowledge of their actions on global brain dynamics is still incomplete. Recent imaging studies have found changes in functional coupling between frontal and parietal brain structures, suggesting a modification in information flow between brain regions during acute effects. Here we assessed the psychedelic-induced changes in directionality of information flow during the acute effects of a psychedelic in humans. We measured modifications in connectivity of brain oscillations using transfer entropy, a nonlinear measure of directed functional connectivity based on information theory. Ten healthy male volunteers with prior experience with psychedelics participated in 2 experimental sessions. They received a placebo or a dose of ayahuasca, a psychedelic preparation containing the serotonergic 5-HT agonist N,N -dimethyltryptamine. The analysis showed significant changes in the coupling of brain oscillations between anterior and posterior recording sites. Transfer entropy analysis showed that frontal sources decreased their influence over central, parietal, and occipital sites. Conversely, sources in posterior locations increased their influence over signals measured at anterior locations. Exploratory correlations found that anterior-to-posterior transfer entropy decreases were correlated with the intensity of subjective effects, while the imbalance between anterior-to-posterior and posterior-to-anterior transfer entropy correlated with the degree of incapacitation experienced. These results suggest that psychedelics induce a temporary disruption of neural hierarchies by reducing top-down control and increasing bottom-up information transfer in the human brain.
Ayudas:	Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI 2011-22680
Derechos:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Lengua:	Anglès
Documento:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Materia:	Oscillatory brain dynamics ; Psychedelics ; Functional connectivity ; Transfer entropy ; Human
Publicado en:	International journal of neuropsychopharmacology, Vol. 18 (april 2015) , ISSN 1469-5111

DOI: 10.1093/ijnp/pyv039
PMID: 25820842

9 p, 1.1 MB

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