On the advances in machine learning and complex network measures to an EEG dataset from DMT experiments

Abstract

There is a growing interest in the medical use of psychedelic substances, as preliminary studies using them for psychiatric disorders have shown positive results. In particular, one of these substances is N, N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), an agonist serotonergic psychedelic that can induce profound alterations in the state of consciousness. 


In this work, we use an exploratory tool to reveal DMT-induced changes in brain activity using EEG data and provide new insights into the mechanisms of action of this psychedelic substance. We used a two-class classification based on (A) the connectivity matrix or (B) complex network measures derived from it as input to a support vector machine.

We found that both approaches could detect changes in the brain's automatic activity, with case (B) showing the highest AUC (89%), indicating that complex network measurements best capture the brain changes that occur due to DMT use. 

In the second step, we ranked the features that contributed the most to this result. For case (A), we found that differences in the high alpha, low beta, and delta frequency bands were most important in distinguishing between the state before and after DMT inhalation, which is consistent with the results described in the literature. Further, the connection between the temporal (TP8) and central cortex (C3) and between the precentral gyrus (FC5) and the lateral occipital cortex (P8) contributed most to the classification result. The connection between regions TP8 and C3 has been found in the literature associated with finger movements that might have occurred during DMT consumption. However, the connection between cortical areas FC5 and P8 has not been found in the literature and is presumably related to the volunteers' emotional, visual, sensory, perceptual, and mystical experiences during DMT consumption.

For case (B), closeness centrality was the most crucial complex network measure. Furthermore, we discovered larger communities and longer average path lengths when DMT was used and the converse when not, showing that the balance between functional segregation and integration had been disrupted. These findings support
the idea that cortical brain activity becomes more entropic under psychedelics.

Overall, a robust computational workflow has been developed here with interpretability of how DMT (or other psychedelics) modify brain networks and insights into their mechanism of action. Finally, the same methodology applied here may help interpret EEG time series from patients who consumed other psychedelic drugs.