A new study has shown how changes in subjective awareness induced by psychedelics are anatomically rooted in specific neurotransmitter receptor systems.
Despite numerous studies that show psychedelics hold promise for mental health and addiction, there is still a lot to learn about how they alter consciousness.
Taking testimonials from 6,850 people who took 27 different drugs, researchers have now taken a first-of-its-kind approach using machine learning. The team extracted commonly used words from the testimonials and linked them with the neurotransmitter receptors that likely induced the experiences.
The findings support the theory that new hallucinogenic drug compounds can be designed to reliably create desired mental states.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, has been carried out by researchers at The Neuro in the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital, the Department of Biomedical Engineering of McGill University, the Broad Institute at Harvard/MIT, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University and Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute.
Lead author of the study, professor Danilo Bzdok, commented: “Hallucinogenic drugs may very well turn out to be the next big thing to improve clinical care of major mental health conditions.
“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.”
For the study, the team associated the participants subjective experiences with brain regions where the receptor combinations are most commonly found. They stated that these turned out to be the lowest and some of the deepest layers of the brain’s information processing.
They used thousands of gene transcription probes to create a 3D map of the brain receptors and the subjective experiences linked to them. The large dataset allowed the team to characterise coherent states of conscious experiences with receptors and brain regions across individuals.
Many researchers and companies are developing novel psychedelic compounds to create desired effects on consciousness in order to deliver efficacious treatments for mental health at a fast pace and large scale. The researchers emphasised that their findings seem to back up the idea that this is possible citing the example of ego-disillusion as a desired psychiatric intervention.
The findings demonstrated that the feeling of ego dissolution was most associated with the receptor serotonin 5-HT2A. However, other serotonin receptors such as 5-HT2C, 5-HT1A and 5-HT2B, the adrenergic receptors Alpha-2A and Beta-2 and the D2 receptor were also linked with this feeling. The researchers noted that a drug targeting these receptors may be able to reliably create this feeling in patients whom clinicians believe might benefit from it.
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