Psychedelics restructure information in the human brain
- 1University College London
Abstract
How do psychedelic drugs alter human brain function? Answering this question relies on our ability to understand how information is stored, transferred, and transformed across the cortex. Here, we leverage a precise mathematical framework for multivariate information decomposition to construct the first comprehensive picture of these processes across five compounds: LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, DMT and 5-MeO-DMT (N=80). We provide a formal and empirical explanation of major prior results, revealing sets of competing underlying phenomena masked by extant approaches. We extend this analysis to novel higher-order phenomena, and we demonstrate how all of these observations can emerge from a minimal generative model in which neural populations operate with reduced self-coupling. In sum, our results suggest that the psychedelic brain is one in which cortical populations become alike, but not necessarily together. This has important implications for models of how psychedelics reorganize brain dynamics to alter subjective experience and alleviate mental health conditions.
Related
- Psychedelics Restructure the Global Workspace of Consciousness
- Information processing-like phenotype of human brain organoids
- Geothermal gradients restructure metabolism in hot spring microbial communities
- Human see, human do? Viewing tool pictures evokes tool-use action information in hand-selective occipitotemporal cortex
- Behavioral signatures suggest distinct modes of suppressing irrelevant information during tactile temporal attention in human participants
BibTeX
@misc{blackburne2026psychedelics,
title = {{Psychedelics restructure information in the human brain}},
author = {G. Blackburne and A. Liardi and P. Mallaroni and R. McAlpine and R. Carhart-Harris and C. Timmermann and S. D. Muthukumaraswamy and J. I. Skipper and P. A. M. Mediano},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.01.755915},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.01.755915v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Psychedelics restructure information in the human brain
AU - G. Blackburne
AU - A. Liardi
AU - P. Mallaroni
AU - R. McAlpine
AU - R. Carhart-Harris
AU - C. Timmermann
AU - S. D. Muthukumaraswamy
AU - J. I. Skipper
AU - P. A. M. Mediano
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.01.755915
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.01.755915v1
AB - How do psychedelic drugs alter human brain function? Answering this question relies on our ability to understand how information is stored, transferred, and transformed across the cortex. Here, we leverage a precise mathematical framework for multivariate information decomposition to construct the first comprehensive picture of these processes across five compounds: LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, DMT and 5-MeO-DMT (N=80). We provide a formal and empirical explanation of major prior results, revealing sets of competing underlying phenomena masked by extant approaches. We extend this analysis to novel higher-order phenomena, and we demonstrate how all of these observations can emerge from a minimal generative model in which neural populations operate with reduced self-coupling. In sum, our results suggest that the psychedelic brain is one in which cortical populations become alike, but not necessarily together. This has important implications for models of how psychedelics reorganize brain dynamics to alter subjective experience and alleviate mental health conditions.
ER -