Do psychedelics change beliefs?

McGovern, H. T.; Leptourgos, Pantelis; Hutchinson, Brendan; Corlett, Philip R.

doi:10.1007/s00213-022-06153-1

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 125 publications

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“…This view predicts that manipulating context, such as by priming ideas of materialism, should induce belief change in the opposite direction, which should be an interesting direction for future research. This view is consistent with conclusions in a recent review suggesting that psychedelic-associated belief changes are importantly determined by “experimenter suggestion” (i.e., context) (McGovern et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Belief changes associated with psychedelic use

Nayak

Singh²,

Yaden

et al. 2022

J Psychopharmacol

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Background: Psychedelic use is anecdotally associated with belief changes, although few studies have tested these claims. Aim: Characterize a broad range of psychedelic occasioned belief changes. Survey: A survey was conducted in 2374 respondents who endorsed having had a belief changing psychedelic experience. Participants rated their agreement with belief statements Before and After the psychedelic experience as well as at the time of survey administration. Results: Factor analysis of 45 belief statements revealed five factors: “Dualism,” “Paranormal/Spirituality,” “Non-mammal consciousness,” “Mammal consciousness,” and “Superstition.” Medium to large effect sizes from Before to After the experience were observed for increases in beliefs in “Dualism” (β = 0.72), “Paranormal/Spirituality” (β = 0.90), “Non-mammal consciousness” (β = 0.72), and “Mammal consciousness” (β = 0.74). In contrast, negligible changes were observed for “Superstition” (β = −0.18).). At the individual item level, increases in non-physicalist beliefs included belief in reincarnation, communication with the dead, existence of consciousness after death, telepathy, and consciousness of inanimate natural objects (e.g., rocks). The percentage of participants who identified as a “Believer (e.g., in Ultimate Reality, Higher Power, and/or God, etc.)” increased from 29% Before to 59% After.” At both the factor and individual item level, higher ratings of mystical experience were associated with greater changes in beliefs. Belief changes assessed after the experience (an average 8.4 years) remained largely unchanged at the time of survey. Conclusions: A single psychedelic experience increased a range of non-physicalist beliefs as well as beliefs about consciousness, meaning, and purpose. Further, the magnitude of belief change is associated with qualitative features of the experience.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Belief changes associated with psychedelic use

Nayak

Singh²,

Yaden

et al. 2022

J Psychopharmacol

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“…Firstly, there is now substantial evidence to support the entropy brain principle, in terms of increased brain entropy in relation to the psychedelic state (Carhart-Harris et al, 2014), and other flexible mental states such as Rapid Eyes Movement Sleep (Lee et al, 2013) and dreaming (Nardelli et al, 2019), jazz improvisation (Simon, 2005), and deep meditation (Kumar et al, 2022;Li, Hu, Zhang and Zhang, 2011) -and reduced brain entropy under states of reduced consciousness such as deep sleep (Kung et al, 2022), the anaesthetized state (Fuentes et al, 2022) and disorders of consciousness (Visani et al, 2022). More specific support for REBUS can be found in perceptual changes under psychedelics (Kaiser and Gold, 1973), altered beliefs under (Safron, 2020) and after psychedelics (McGovern et al, 2022;Timmermann et al, 2021) as well as other trait changes (Aday et al, 2021) as well as decreased top-down processing seen through such metrics as travelling waves (Alamia et al, 2020), dynamic causal modelling (Muthukumaraswamy et al, 2013), and transfer entropy (Wang, Chen and Chen, 2022;Vicente et al, 2011) reduced hierarchical organisation under psychedelics (Girn et al 2022) and the flattening of the brain's energy landscape under (Singleton et al 2021) and after (Daws et al 2022) psychedelics.…”

Section: Neuroscience Of Psychedelics: Psychedelics As Destabilisers ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Pattern Breaking: A Complex Systems Approach to Psychedelic Medicine

Hipólito¹,

Mago²,

Rosas³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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There is growing evidence for the safety and efficacy of psychedelic therapy in mental health care. What is less understood however, is how psychedelics act to yield therapeutic results. In this paper we propose that psychedelics act as destabilisers — both in a psychological and a neurophysiological sense. Our proposed framework builds on the ‘entropic brain’ hypothesis, according to which psychedelics increase the entropy of spontaneous cortical activity and, in parallel, the richness or depth of content of psychological experience. The so-called ‘RElaxed Beliefs Under pSychedelics’ (REBUS) model is a predictive-coding inspired extension to this hypothesis, which states that psychedelics’ entropic action is paralleled by a relaxation of prior assumptions. Here we adopt a complex systems theory (CST) perspective, proposing that psychedelics act as destabilisers of excessively reinforced fixed points — or ‘attractors’ — which translates as the breaking of excessively reinforced or overweighted patterns of thinking or behaving. Our CST approach explains how psychedelic-induced increases in brain entropy destabilise neurophysiological set-points that are synonymous with overweighted priors, thereby augmenting and enriching the account given by REBUS. We believe that this perspective helps inspire conceptualisations of psychedelic psychotherapy — bearing relevance both to the peak psychedelic experience and subsequent sub-acute period of potential recovery. We discuss implications for risk mitigation and treatment optimization in psychedelic medicine.

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“…Psychedelic and MDMA actions may drive the brain to reinterpret the world, potentially updating past beliefs and desires. Psychedelic drugs may alter the experience of reality and the way inferences of the world are made, realigning what is expected with what is perceived . Under the action of psychedelic drugs, the brain and its modulatory systems may be prone to reinterpret affective, sensory, and cognitive inputs in ways that reconcile mismatches between what is expected and what is perceived.…”

Section: Drug Actions and Resetting Expectationsmentioning

confidence: 99%