Largest ever psychedelics study maps changes of conscious awareness to neurotransmitter systems

Date:
March 16, 2022
Source:
McGill University
Summary:
In the world's largest study on psychedelics and the brain, a team
of researchers have shown how drug-induced changes in subjective
awareness are anatomically rooted in specific neurotransmitter
receptor systems.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Psychedelics are now a rapidly growing area of neuroscience and clinical research, one that may produce much-needed new therapies for disorders
such as depression and schizophrenia. Yet there is still a lot to know
about how these drug agents alter states of consciousness.


==========================================================================
In the world's largest study on psychedelics and the brain, a team of researchers from The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital)
and Department of Biomedical Engineering of McGill University, the Broad Institute at Harvard/MIT, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University,
and Mila -- Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute have shown how drug-induced changes in subjective awareness are anatomically rooted in specific neurotransmitter receptor systems.

The researchers gathered 6,850 testimonials from people who took a range
of 27 different psychedelic drugs. In a first-of-its-kind approach, they designed a machine learning strategy to extract commonly used words from
the testimonials and link them with the neurotransmitter receptors that
likely induced them. The interdisciplinary team could then associate the subjective experiences with brain regions where the receptor combinations
are most commonly found -- these turned out to be the lowest and some
of the deepest layers of the brain's information processing layers.

Using thousands of gene transcription probes, the team created a 3D map
of the brain receptors and the subjective experiences linked to them,
across the whole brain. While psychedelic experience is known to vary
widely from person to person, the large testimonial dataset allowed
the team to characterize coherent states of conscious experiences with receptors and brain regions across individuals. This supports the theory
that new hallucinogenic drug compounds can be designed to reliably create desired mental states.

For example, a promising effect of some psychedelics for psychiatric intervention is ego-dissolution -- the feeling of being detached with
the self.

The study found that this feeling was most associated with the receptor serotonin 5-HT2A. However, other serotonin receptors (5-HT2C, 5-HT1A,
5-HT2B), adrenergic receptors Alpha-2A and Beta-2, as well as the D2
receptor were also linked with the feeling of ego-dissolution. A drug
targeting these receptors may be able to reliably create this feeling
in patients whom clinicians believe might benefit from it.

"Hallucinogenic drugs may very well turn out to be the next big thing to improve clinical care of major mental health conditions," says Professor
Danilo Bzdok, the study's lead author "Our study provides a first step,
a proof of principle that we may be able to build machine learning
systems in the future that can accurately predict which neurotransmitter receptor combinations need to be stimulated to induce a specific state
of conscious experience in a given person." This study, published in
the journal Science Advances on March 16, 2022, was funded with the help
of the Brain Canada Foundation, through the Canada Brain Research Fund,
as well as by NIH grant R01AG068563A and the Canadian Institutes of
Health Research. Danilo Bzdok was also supported by the Healthy Brains
Healthy Lives initiative (Canada First Research Excellence fund), and
by the CIFAR Artificial Intelligence Chairs program (Canada Institute
for Advanced Research), as well as Google.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by McGill_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Galen Ballentine, Samuel Freesun Friedman, Danilo Bzdok. Trips and
neurotransmitters: Discovering principled patterns across 6850
hallucinogenic experiences. Science Advances, 2022; 8 (11) DOI:
10.1126/ sciadv.abl6989 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220316145736.htm

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