Exploring the effect of microdosing psychedelics on creativity in an open-label natural setting

Abstract

Introduction: Recently popular sub-perceptual doses of psychedelic substances such as truffles, referred to as microdosing, allegedly have multiple beneficial effects including creativity and problem solving performance, potentially through targeting serotonergic 5-HT 2A receptors and promoting cognitive flexibility, crucial to creative thinking. Nevertheless, enhancing effects of microdosing remain anecdotal, and in the absence of quantitative research on microdosing psychedelics it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions on that matter. Here, our main aim was to quantitatively explore the cognitive-enhancing potential of microdosing psychedelics in healthy adults.Methods: During a microdosing event organized by the Dutch Psychedelic Society, we examined the effects of psychedelic truffles (which were later analyzed to quantify active psychedelic alkaloids) on two creativity-related problem-solving tasks: the Picture Concept Task assessing convergent thinking, and the Alternative Uses Task assessing divergent thinking. A short version of the Ravens Progressive Matrices task assessed potential changes in fluid intelligence. We tested once before taking a microdose and once while the effects were manifested.Results: We found that both convergent and divergent thinking performance was improved after a nonblinded microdose, whereas fluid intelligence was unaffected.Conclusion: While this study provides quantitative support for the cognitive enhancing properties of microdosing psychedelics, future research has to confirm these preliminary findings in more rigorous placebo-controlled study designs. Based on these preliminary results we speculate that psychedelics might affect cognitive metacontrol policies by optimizing the balance between cognitive persistence and flexibility. We hope this study will motivate future microdosing studies with more controlled designs to test this hypothesis.

Microdosing psychedelics as cognitive and emotional enhancers.

“…In addition to creativity-enhancing effects, our investigations also suggest that microdoses of psychedelics may furthermore have emotion recognition-enhancing effects in healthy humans (Prochazkova et al, 2020). Thus, microdosing may be a neuroenhancer with the potential for what has been termed “emotional enhancement” (Normann, Nissen, & Frase, 2012).…”

“…Specifically, in a longitudinal, randomized, placebo-controlled, triple-blind microdosing study, we found that microdoses of “magic truffles” (containing approximately 300 μg of psilocybin) enhance the recognition of difficult items on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (an advanced test of theory of mind and emotion recognition) in healthy adults. This result, moreover, was not influenced by placebo or expectation effects (Prochazkova et al, 2020). These findings are at odds with the effects of large doses of psychedelics (LSD and psilocybin) and ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (i.e., MDMA), a “mild psychedelic” (Lyvers & Meester, 2012) releaser of 5-HT, DA, and norepinephrine (Rothman et al, 2001), which have frequently been shown to impair the recognition of negative emotions (Bedi, Hyman, & de Wit, 2010; Dolder, Schmid, Müller, Borgwardt, & Liechti, 2016; Hysek et al, 2014; Kirkpatrick, Lee, Wardle, Jacob, & de Wit, 2014; Kometer et al, 2012).…”

“…Research on psychedelics in humans has continued recently however, in what has been described as a psychedelic renaissance (Apud, 2016; Carhart-Harris et al, 2018). In fact, this class of compounds has reemerged as a legitimate and promising line of research with potential utility in studying human psychopathology and consciousness (Carhart-Harris et al, 2016), as well as in enhancing creativity, emotion recognition, and cognitive function (Prochazkova et al, 2018, 2020).…”