Multimodal creativity assessments following acute and sustained microdosing of lysergic acid diethylamide

Introduction

Creativity is commonly reported as a subjective benefit of psychedelic microdosing, yet controlled laboratory studies have rarely detected objective improvements on standard creativity measures. The literature reviewed by Murphy and colleagues highlights conceptual and methodological challenges: creativity is often defined as producing outputs that are both novel and useful, and this bipartite conception has motivated tests of divergent thinking (idea generation) and convergent thinking (idea evaluation). Previous high-dose psychedelic studies have suggested acute increases in associative or generative processes alongside reductions in evaluative control, and post-acute effects have been inconsistent across substances, contexts and measurement approaches. Microdosing is proposed as a way to obtain associative benefits while preserving cognitive control, but existing microdosing studies are mostly uncontrolled, rely on self-report, or have used creativity tasks whose construct validity has been questioned. This study set out to address the gap between subjective reports and laboratory measures by administering a multimodal battery of creativity assessments within a placebo-controlled microdosing trial (the MDLSD trial). The battery combined standard divergent and convergent tasks (Alternate Uses Test, AUT; Remote Associates Task, RAT), an applied visual-art Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), and a bespoke Everyday Problem-Solving Questionnaire (EPSQ) to capture everyday idea generation and evaluation. Given the limited and mixed prior evidence, the investigators did not state directional hypotheses but aimed to test whether acute (on-dose) or durable (two days after a six-week regimen) changes in creativity could be detected across these modalities.