LSD enhances the emotional response to music

Classic serotonergic psychedelics such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) produce marked alterations of consciousness and have long been reported to influence emotion. Earlier psychotherapeutic work in the 1950s and 1960s emphasised that psychedelics could reduce ego defences and facilitate emotional release, and music has historically been used both to evoke emotion and as an adjunct in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Despite the prominence of music in clinical and ceremonial psychedelic contexts, no modern placebo-controlled study had directly tested whether psychedelics actually amplify the emotional response to music. Kaelen and colleagues set out to address that gap by testing the hypothesis that music-evoked emotions are enhanced under LSD. Healthy volunteers listened to five instrumental music tracks on two study days (placebo first, then LSD), and emotional responses were measured after each track using a visual analogue scale (VAS) and the nine-item Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS-9). The study specifically predicted enhanced emotions related to transcendence (e.g. fascination, feelings of spirituality).

The study was approved by the appropriate ethics body and conducted under institutional sponsorship and a Home Office licence for Schedule 1 drug research. Participants were recruited by word of mouth, gave written informed consent, and underwent medical and psychiatric screening including ECG and blood tests. Key exclusions included age under 21, diagnosed psychiatric illness or immediate family history of psychosis, no prior experience with classic psychedelics, recent problematic alcohol use and pregnancy. The extracted text does not clearly report the full set of NEO-FFI scores due to truncation. Ten healthy volunteers (one female; mean age 34.2±7.4, range 26–47) took part. All had prior psychedelic experience (mean estimated lifetime LSD uses reported) but not within 21 days of testing. Placebo (10 ml saline) was given on the first day and LSD on the second, separated by 5–7 days; participants were blind to condition but the researchers were not. Intravenous LSD dosing varied across participants (one received 40 µg, two received 50 µg, six received 70 µg and one received 80 µg) because a primary aim was to identify a safe dose for a later neuroimaging study. Each dose was infused in a 10-ml solution over 3 minutes with a subsequent 60-s saline flush. Testing occurred in a comfortable clinical room at the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility. Physiological measures (blood pressure, heart rate) and repeated self-ratings of subjective drug intensity (0–10 VAS) were collected at baseline, frequently during the first 45 minutes and then at longer intervals. Five music tracks were played on each session via headphones while participants lay supine with eyes closed; tracks were presented at approximately 44±17, 101±25, 139±33 (tracks 3 and 4) and 250±53 minutes post-dosing. Two playlists (A and B) of five instrumental tracks each were preselected from genres including neo-classical and ambient using preratings from a separate sample to balance emotional potency, liking and familiarity; playlist order was counterbalanced across participants. After each track participants rated "How emotionally affected were you by the music?" on a continuous 0–100 VAS (primary outcome) and then completed the GEMS-9, a nine-item scale capturing music-evoked emotions (each item scored 0–4). Statistical analyses used paired two-tailed t tests for within-subject comparisons (placebo vs LSD), with false discovery rate (FDR) correction for multiple comparisons; Pearson correlations tested associations between peak subjective drug intensity and music-evoked emotional measures.

Participant sample comprised ten volunteers (one female). Self-reported lifetime drug use and baseline mood/personality scores were provided; Beck Depression Inventory scores were low (mean 1.9±1.6). The extracted text does not fully report some NEO-FFI subscale values due to truncation. Physiological monitoring showed a slight elevation in systolic blood pressure under LSD relative to baseline and placebo, but these changes were not statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. Heart rate was recorded at intervals; detailed heart rate results are provided in a table in the original paper (not fully reproduced in the extracted text). Subjective effects of LSD were first noticed between 5 and 15 minutes post-infusion, peaked between 45 and 90 minutes and maintained a plateau of roughly 3 hours before subsiding. The five highest-scoring VAS items under LSD included "my thoughts wandered freely," "my imagination was extremely vivid," "I felt amazing," "things looked strange" and "I felt an inner warmth." Primary outcome: mean VAS scores for "How emotionally affected were you by the music?" averaged across all stimuli were significantly higher under LSD (0.71±0.14) than under placebo (0.51±0.18; t=3.559, df=9, p=0.006). All nine GEMS-9 factors showed higher mean scores on LSD than placebo. After FDR correction, four GEMS-9 items showed statistically significant increases under LSD: wonder, transcendence, power and tenderness (reported FDR-adjusted p=0.027 for each). Correlation analyses indicated a strong positive relationship between peak subjective intensity of LSD and emotional arousal to music (Pearson r=0.79, n=10, p=0.006). The same correlation coefficient (r=0.79, p=0.006) was observed between peak drug intensity and increases in the GEMS-9 factor transcendence.

Kaelen and colleagues interpret the findings as supportive of the primary hypothesis that LSD enhances music-evoked emotion, with a particular amplification of emotions associated with transcendence and wonder. The largest drug-related increases were observed for GEMS-9 categories labelled wonder, transcendence, tenderness and power. The authors note that music reliably evokes emotion and has been used in therapeutic contexts to deepen and direct emotional processing; therefore, the observed enhancement of music-evoked emotion under LSD aligns with historical and contemporary therapeutic practice where music is employed to facilitate inner exploration and peak or spiritual-type experiences. The investigators acknowledge several limitations that constrain interpretation. Expectancy and suggestibility under LSD could have inflated self-reports, and maintenance of the blind was difficult given the conspicuous psychoactive effects; although participants were not told the specific hypotheses, some may have intuited them. The study design always administered placebo first and LSD second to avoid carryover, so the session order was not fully randomised; however, the authors argue that playlist balancing makes simple order effects less likely. A key methodological limitation was the absence of pre-versus post-music emotion ratings, which prevents separating a general drug-induced change in mood from a specific interaction between music and LSD. The authors note that while the GEMS-9 instructions asked participants to rate how the music made them feel (not their general mood), only a factorial design with pre/post measures could formally test a music×drug interaction. Other constraints include the small sample size, the predominance of male and psychedelic-experienced participants, and the limited range of musical genres tested, all of which limit generalisability. The authors suggest future work incorporate variable dosing, larger samples, an active comparator or control conditions (including non-musical sounds), and designs that permit formal interaction testing. In sum, the authors conclude the data provide tentative evidence that LSD amplifies emotional responses to music and that this effect may contribute to peak or spiritual-type experiences often reported in psychedelic sessions; they recommend further research to test whether enhanced music-evoked emotion mediates therapeutic outcomes and to investigate underlying neural mechanisms.

The authors conclude that their pilot data offer tentative support for the hypothesis that psychedelics enhance the emotional response to music, but emphasise that extension and replication studies are required. They recommend future research to test the role of music in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy more directly and to elucidate how psychedelics modulate music-evoked emotion through effects on brain activity.