Neuroimaging & Brain MeasuresCreativityPsilocybin

Spontaneous and deliberate creative cognition during and after psilocybin exposure

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, psilocybin (0.17 mg/kg) produced time- and construct-specific effects on creativity: acutely it increased spontaneous creative insights while impairing deliberate task-based creativity, and seven days later it increased the number of novel ideas. Ultrahigh-field multimodal imaging showed these acute and persisting effects were predicted by within- and between-network connectivity of the default mode network, implicating DMN dynamics in psychedelic modulation of creative cognition.

Authors

  • Kim Kuypers
  • Johannes Ramaekers
  • Amanda Feilding

Published

Translational Psychiatry
individual Study

Abstract

Creativity is an essential cognitive ability linked to all areas of our everyday functioning. Thus, finding a way to enhance it is of broad interest. A large number of anecdotal reports suggest that the consumption of psychedelic drugs can enhance creative thinking; however, scientific evidence is lacking. Following a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group design, we demonstrated that psilocybin (0.17 mg/kg) induced a time- and construct-related differentiation of effects on creative thinking. Acutely, psilocybin increased ratings of (spontaneous) creative insights, while decreasing (deliberate) task-based creativity. Seven days after psilocybin, number of novel ideas increased. Furthermore, we utilized an ultrahigh field multimodal brain imaging approach, and found that acute and persisting effects were predicted by within- and between-network connectivity of the default mode network. Findings add some support to historical claims that psychedelics can influence aspects of the creative process, potentially indicating them as a tool to investigate creativity and subsequent underlying neural mechanisms. Trial NL6007; psilocybin as a tool for enhanced cognitive flexibility;https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/6007.

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Research Summary of 'Spontaneous and deliberate creative cognition during and after psilocybin exposure'

Introduction

Creativity is described as a dynamic cognitive capacity involving shifts between idea generation (divergent thinking, DT) and idea evaluation (convergent thinking, CT). Previous anecdotal and historical reports have linked serotonin 5-HT2A agonist psychedelics such as psilocybin to enhanced creativity, but prior scientific evidence is limited, methodologically heterogeneous, and inconclusive. Contemporary work has suggested psychedelics can produce hyper-associative cognition and persistent changes in DT or CT in naturalistic or pseudo-experimental settings, while neuroimaging studies indicate acute changes in large-scale resting-state networks (RSNs) — notably disintegration of the default mode network (DMN), widened dynamic repertoire of connectivity, and increased coupling of normally anticorrelated networks — that can persist beyond the acute drug phase. Mason and colleagues aimed to provide a controlled experimental test of whether psilocybin affects both the acute and persisting (7-day) components of creative cognition, and whether drug-induced brain changes predict those effects. The study measured task-based DT and CT using the Alternate Uses Test (AUT) and Picture Concept Test (PCT), subjective spontaneous creative experiences via the insightfulness subscale of the 5D-ASC, resting-state functional connectivity (rsfMRI) of the DMN, frontoparietal control network (FPN) and salience network (SN), and local glutamate (via 7T MRS) in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and hippocampus. The primary hypotheses were that psilocybin would acutely and persistently increase DT (predicted by DMN within-network FC) and acutely decrease CT (predicted by DMN–FPN between-network FC).

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Study Details

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