A new study has shown that higher ratings of mystical-type experiences induced by psychedelics were associated with greater increases in the attribution of consciousness.
Belief changing experiences from classic psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD or ayahuasca, could be “long-lasting”, say researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
Current research into psychedelics is largely focused on the benefits they could provide for the treatment of mental ill-health. However, many believe psychedelics can provide insights into the nature of consciousness.
The research team set out to address the question of whether psychedelics might change the attribution of consciousness, publishing their findings in Frontiers in Psychology.
Analysing data on 1,606 people who had a belief-changing psychedelic experience, the researchers discovered that among people who have had just one of these experiences, there were large increases in attribution of consciousness to animate and inanimate things.
Study researcher, Sandeep Nayak, MD, postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, commented: “This study demonstrates that when beliefs change following a psychedelic experience, attributions of consciousness to various entities tend to increase.
“It’s not clear why, whether that might be an innate drug effect, cultural factors or whether psychedelics might somehow expose innate cognitive biases that attribute features of the mind to the world.”
The results from surveys demonstrated that, following a belief-changing psychedelic experience,
attribution of consciousness to insects grew from 33 per cent to 57 per cent, to fungi from 21 per cent to 56 per cent, to plants from 26 per cent to 61 per cent, to inanimate natural objects from 8 per cent to 26 per cent and to inanimate manmade objects from 3 per cent to 15 per cent.
“The results suggesting that a single psychedelic experience can produce a broad increase in attribution of consciousness to other things, raises intriguing questions about possible innate or experiential mechanisms underlying such belief changes,” said Roland Griffiths, PhD, professor in the Neuropsychopharmacology of Consciousness at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.
“The topic of consciousness is a notoriously difficult scientific problem that has led many to conclude it is not solvable.”
Nayak added: “On average, participants indicated the belief-changing experience in question occurred eight years prior to taking the survey, so these belief changes may be long-lasting.”
Belief-changing, or “mystical” type experience have been suggested to positively benefit well being and mental health.
Griffith, in his 2018 study with Frederick Barrett ‘Classic Hallucinogens and Mystical Experiences: Phenomenology and Neural Correlates’, highlights that “enduring personal meaning in healthy volunteers and therapeutic outcomes in patients, including reduction and cessation of substance abuse behaviours and reduction of anxiety and depression in patients with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis, are related to the occurrence of mystical experiences during drug sessions.”
In another study, Griffith et all comment: “Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences with participant-attributed increases in well being.”
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