Spontaneous and deliberate creative cognition during and after psilocybin exposure

Abstract

Creativity is an essential cognitive ability linked to all areas of our everyday functioning. Thus, finding a way to enhance it is of broad interest. A large number of anecdotal reports suggest that the consumption of psychedelic drugs can enhance creative thinking; however, scientific evidence is lacking. Following a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group design, we demonstrated that psilocybin (0.17 mg/kg) induced a time- and construct-related differentiation of effects on creative thinking. Acutely, psilocybin increased ratings of (spontaneous) creative insights, while decreasing (deliberate) task-based creativity. Seven days after psilocybin, number of novel ideas increased. Furthermore, we utilized an ultrahigh field multimodal brain imaging approach, and found that acute and persisting effects were predicted by within- and between-network connectivity of the default mode network. Findings add some support to historical claims that psychedelics can influence aspects of the creative process, potentially indicating them as a tool to investigate creativity and subsequent underlying neural mechanisms. Trial NL6007; psilocybin as a tool for enhanced cognitive flexibility; https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/6007.

Microdosing psychedelics and its effect on creativity: Lessons learned from three double-blind placebo controlled longitudinal trials

“…Current findings are congruent with previous studies indicating positive yet limited effects of high doses of psychedelics on divergent thinking (Mason et al, 2021;Mason et al, 2019;). For instance, Zegans and colleagues (1967) conducted a placebo-controlled study with a low dose of LSD and observed that participants in the LSD condition showed more original responses as compared to participants in the placebo condition.…”

“…For instance, showed that higher-order inhibitory performance is impaired under moderate doses (100µg) LSD and the inhibition deficits positively correlated with the level of visual hallucinations. Similarly, a recent study by Mason et al (2021) showed that acute effects of moderate doses of psilocybin decrease task-dependent creativity (convergent thinking and divergent fluency), while seven days after treatment the number of novel ideas increased. Fortunately, novel opportunities to study cognitive enhancement via psychedelics arose recently.…”

“…This effect was operationalized by the so-called 'entropic brain hypothesis' (Carhart-Harris, 2018), which asserts that brain function in a psychedelic state is becoming more malleable, unstable and thus more sensitive to its environmental factors. Preliminary evidence for this hypothesis was recently put forward by Mason et al (2021), who showed that divergent thinking increased seven days after a large dose of psilocybin and was predicted by changes within and between-network connectivity of the default mode network.…”

“…A pro-longed microdosing period was recommended by previous researchers as optimal to achieve more salient microdosing benefits (Fadiman & Kob, 2017). This effect could hypothetically exist through build-up neuro-chemistry and gradual alteration in baseline brain connectivity Mason et al, 2021). In that case, we would anticipate the most pronounced effects at the end of the microdosing period.…”

“…For each stimuli participants had to find single common association between one picture from each row by clicking on the items and writing down the common connection (please see Supplementary materials, Section S3.1). In line with previous studies participants had 30 seconds per item to find the solution (Mason et al, 2021). Because the task assumes there is only one correct solution to each trial, the task has been previously compared to the RAT assessing convergent thinking (Hurks et al, 2010).…”