Imagine your brain as a rigid, hierarchical institution with a formal communication style and a strict chain of command. The prefrontal cortex acts as the dean, responsible for executive functioning, the frontal lobes as tenured professors in charge of facilitating learning, and the remaining neural networks are lecturers, laboratory technicians, and other workers carrying out their specific daily tasks. For some of us, we would thrive in a well-structured workplace, but for others we may function better with a less regimented style or free-flowing environment. Here is where safely administered psychedelic drugs can come in. Recent research from the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), in Chile, suggests that for brains struggling to function under a strict command structure, psychedelics can be applied to loosen hierarchy, allow roles along the chain-of-command to become blurred, and communication to flow more freely.
Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin (the active chemical in magic mushrooms) are known for their ability to cause a mind-altering experience. However, in recent years The National Institute of Health has started to see their potential as effective and safe treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Traditionally, mood stabilizers are often used to treat these conditions by stabilizing abnormal brain activity and helping to regulate mood and emotions. Psychedelics do something different: they introduce controlled instability.
A core hypothesis suggests that psychedelic drugs work by relaxing hierarchical processes in the brain, essentially reorganizing how different regions interact and adjusting the coding of a person’s prior beliefs and assumptions. By breaking down past beliefs and rigid patterns of thought they may help patients escape deeply seeded loops of depression and anxiety. As Benjamin Louis, a medical doctor and associate professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Utah, puts it in his TED Talk: “With administration of psilocybin, the brain temporarily enters a state of global increase in integration and interconnection across different neural networks that are normally compartmentalized. Simply put, brain regions that normally don’t talk to each other are now conversing.” But how can we measure these psychedelic-specific effects on the brain and how can we provide quantifiable evidence of how psychedelics reshape the brain’s hierarchy, making them a suitable tool for therapy?
Enter Dr. Josephine Cruzat and her team at BrainLat. Dr. Cruzat and her team have turned to a novel approach called the turbulence framework to analyze the changes in brain hierarchy induced by LSD and psilocybin. This new approach to studying brain dynamics draws inspiration from fluid dynamics, specifically the concept of turbulence. Traditional methods of studying brain function often rely on global time-based measures, that is, how stable or dynamic brain activity remains over time. The turbulence framework, however, expands this by integrating both spatial and temporal dimensions, revealing where in the brain, as well as when and how fast brain activity unfolds. One of the most compelling findings was that although LSD and psilocybin increased the psychedelic state through different neural pathways, they both appeared to have shown a clear trend towards greater transmission of information through long range cortical connections. Long range cortical connections are what is believed to be critical for consciousness, leading to enhanced psychological insight and self-awareness.
Understanding how LSD and psilocybin modulate brain hierarchy could revolutionize psychiatry. If certain patterns of turbulence are associated with positive therapeutic outcomes, future treatments could isolate for these outcomes and be tailored to enhance their effects. Using quantifiable methods to show these effects brings scientists and future students one giant leap closer to understanding how psychedelic drugs can fit into the pharmaceutical world as a safe and effective therapeutic tool. So, whether you see the brain as a high functioning university or a web of connections, one thing is clear: the future of psychedelic study is a powerful discipline, and this is only the beginning of what is in store.
