LSD‐induced entropic brain activity predicts subsequent personality change
Open accessAbstract
Personality is known to be relatively stable throughout adulthood. Nevertheless, it has been shown that major life events with high personal significance, including experiences engendered by psychedelic drugs, can have an enduring impact on some core facets of personality. In the present, balanced‐order, placebo‐controlled study, we investigated biological predictors of post‐lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) changes in personality. Nineteen healthy adults underwent resting state functional MRI scans under LSD (75µg, I.V.) and placebo (saline I.V.). The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO‐PI‐R) was completed at screening and 2 weeks after LSD/placebo. Scanning sessions consisted of three 7.5‐min eyes‐closed resting‐state scans, one of which involved music listening. A standardized preprocessing pipeline was used to extract measures of sample entropy, which characterizes the predictability of an fMRI time‐series. Mixed‐effects models were used to evaluate drug‐induced shifts in brain entropy and their relationship with the observed increases in the personality trait openness at the 2‐week follow‐up. Overall, LSD had a pronounced global effect on brain entropy, increasing it in both sensory and hierarchically higher networks across multiple time scales. These shifts predicted enduring increases in trait openness. Moreover, the predictive power of the entropy increases was greatest for the music‐listening scans and when “ego‐dissolution” was reported during the acute experience. These results shed new light on how LSD‐induced shifts in brain dynamics and concomitant subjective experience can be predictive of lasting changes in personality. Hum Brain Mapp 37:3203–3213, 2016 . © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc .
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Feelings from a substance are not inauthentic where the meaning derived can continue to influence and help the person beyond the use of the drug.
“we suggest this is not the case where the meaning derived can continue to influence and help the person beyond the use of the drug, as studies have indicated (Griffiths et al. 2008;Lebedev et al. 2016).”
From Authenticity and Love Drugs: Insights from Psychedelic Therapy (2026) · cites this paper as Lebedev et al. 2016
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- Authors
- Lebedev, A. V., Kaelen, M., Lövdén, M., Nilsson, J., Feilding, A., Nutt, D. J., & Carhart‐Harris, R. L.
- Affiliations
- Stockholm University (SE)
- Imperial College London (GB)
- Beckley Foundation (GB)
- Division of Brain Sciences Department of Medicine Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology, Imperial College London United Kingdom
- Corresponding author
- Lebedev, A.V.
- Venue
- Human Brain Mapping
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2016-05-06
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 3203-3213
- ISSN
- 1065-9471 (ISSN-L)
- 1097-0193
- PMC
- PMC6867426
- OpenAlex
- W2346262441
- Cited by
- 303
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 36 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 61 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 26 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 4
- FWCI
- 26.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Human Brain Mapping (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Spiral (Imperial College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Beckley Foundation (Beckley-Imperial Research Programme) and crowd-funding campaign carried out at walacea.com
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychedelics and Drug Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Keywords
- lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD, personality change, openness to experience, sample entropy, resting-state brain dynamics, psychedelic effects, ego dissolution, music listening, subjective experience
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain, Brain Mapping, Female, Hallucinogens, Humans, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Personality, Entropy, Young Adult
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