Language-associated brain representations covary with disruption of selfhood under psilocybin
- 1University College London
Abstract
Language helps organise experience into an idiosyncratic, temporally extended sense of self. We therefore used fMRI to investigate whether greater similarity between participants in the activity of language-associated brain regions accompanied psilocybin-induced loss of selfhood. Participants heard music and viewed moving clouds at baseline and after 19 mg psilocybin. At each brain location and time point, we tested whether similarity increased with each pair's summed rank on the Ego Dissolution Inventory (EDI; N=43). We grouped independent components of these associations by time course and decoded each group's map with Neurosynth. Elementary visual imagery (SI; N=49) and baseline activity served as comparators. Under psilocybin, one group formed a distributed, left-lateralised frontotemporal network matching the Neurosynth language map (r=.382, spatial-null p<.001, q=.003), nearly twice the largest comparator estimate (SI: r=.208, p=.004, q=.028; baseline: r<.12). In exploratory analyses, resting-state connectivity of this network decreased with posterior visual cortex and increased with thalamic and frontal regions. Participants with higher EDI scores showed larger changes (Spearman's rho=.455, Bonferroni-adjusted p=.048; SI: rho=.008), most strongly for items describing loss of ego or identity (rho=.43 to .51). We propose that language-associated systems incorporate each person's semantic and autobiographical context into experience, and that disrupting them contributes to loss of ego and identity.
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BibTeX
@misc{cooper2026languageassociated,
title = {{Language-associated brain representations covary with disruption of selfhood under psilocybin}},
author = {G. Cooper and D. Stoliker and S. V. Astl Delgado and G. Blackburne and L. Novelli and D. W. Green and A. Razi and R. K. Das and J. I. Skipper},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.06.757069},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.06.757069v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Language-associated brain representations covary with disruption of selfhood under psilocybin
AU - G. Cooper
AU - D. Stoliker
AU - S. V. Astl Delgado
AU - G. Blackburne
AU - L. Novelli
AU - D. W. Green
AU - A. Razi
AU - R. K. Das
AU - J. I. Skipper
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/06
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.06.757069
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.06.757069v1
AB - Language helps organise experience into an idiosyncratic, temporally extended sense of self. We therefore used fMRI to investigate whether greater similarity between participants in the activity of language-associated brain regions accompanied psilocybin-induced loss of selfhood. Participants heard music and viewed moving clouds at baseline and after 19 mg psilocybin. At each brain location and time point, we tested whether similarity increased with each pair's summed rank on the Ego Dissolution Inventory (EDI; N=43). We grouped independent components of these associations by time course and decoded each group's map with Neurosynth. Elementary visual imagery (SI; N=49) and baseline activity served as comparators. Under psilocybin, one group formed a distributed, left-lateralised frontotemporal network matching the Neurosynth language map (r=.382, spatial-null p<.001, q=.003), nearly twice the largest comparator estimate (SI: r=.208, p=.004, q=.028; baseline: r<.12). In exploratory analyses, resting-state connectivity of this network decreased with posterior visual cortex and increased with thalamic and frontal regions. Participants with higher EDI scores showed larger changes (Spearman's rho=.455, Bonferroni-adjusted p=.048; SI: rho=.008), most strongly for items describing loss of ego or identity (rho=.43 to .51). We propose that language-associated systems incorporate each person's semantic and autobiographical context into experience, and that disrupting them contributes to loss of ego and identity.
ER -