Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Effective connectivity changes in LSD-induced altered states of consciousness in humans.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 126 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
126 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 295 citations in OpenAlex.
- What fMRI studies say about the nature of the psychedelic effect: a scoping review.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Pooled it
- Psychedelic-assisted therapy for treating anxiety, depression, and existential distress in people with life-threatening diseases.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Default Mode Network Modulation by Psychedelics: A Systematic Review.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Pooled it
- Neural mechanisms of psychedelic visual imagery.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Neural complexity is increased after low doses of LSD, but not moderate to high doses of oral THC or methamphetamine.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- The effect of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on whole-brain functional and effective connectivity.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Triple network model of brain connectivity changes related to adverse mood effects in an oral contraceptive placebo-controlled trial.Translational psychiatry · 2023Trial
- Low doses of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) increase reward-related brain activity.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Low doses of LSD reduce broadband oscillatory power and modulate event-related potentials in healthy adults.Psychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Trial
- Preliminary Report on the Effects of a Low Dose of LSD on Resting-State Amygdala Functional Connectivity.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2020Trial
- Safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of low dose lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in healthy older volunteers.Psychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Psychedelics align brain activity with context.Nature · 2026Article
- The working lives of neuronal 5-HTRSC chemical biology · 2026Review
- Modeled Long-Term Effects of Psilocybin on Dynamic Activity and Effective Connectivity of Fronto-Striatal-Thalamic Circuits.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Learning as the unifying mechanism of psychedelic action.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2026Review
- An international mega-analysis of psychedelic drug effects on brain circuit function.Nature medicine · 2026Article
- Predictors of the Effectiveness of Psychedelics in Treating Depression-A Scoping Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Learning from boundlessness: epistemic shifts towards a holistic worldview following psychedelic experiences.Npj mental health research · 2026Article
- Mind the gap! Addressing unresolved aspects of abuse potential evaluation and scheduling of classic and novel psychedelic drugs.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2026Review
66 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Psychedelics exert unique effects on human consciousness. The thalamic filter model suggests that core effects of psychedelics may result from gating deficits, based on a disintegration of information processing within cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) feedback loops. To test this hypothesis, we characterized changes in directed (effective) connectivity between selected CTSC regions after acute administration of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and after pretreatment with Ketanserin (a selective serotonin 2A receptor antagonist) plus LSD in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, cross-over study in 25 healthy participants. We used spectral dynamic causal modeling (DCM) for resting-state fMRI data. Fully connected DCM models were specified for each treatment condition to investigate the connectivity between the following areas: thalamus, ventral striatum, posterior cingulate cortex, and temporal cortex. Our results confirm major predictions proposed in the CSTC model and provide evidence that LSD alters effective connectivity within CSTC pathways that have been implicated in the gating of sensory and sensorimotor information to the cortex. In particular, LSD increased effective connectivity from the thalamus to the posterior cingulate cortex in a way that depended on serotonin 2A receptor activation, and decreased effective connectivity from the ventral striatum to the thalamus independently of serotonin 2A receptor activation. Together, these results advance our mechanistic understanding of the action of psychedelics in health and disease. This is important for the development of new pharmacological therapeutics and also increases our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the potential clinical efficacy of psychedelics.
Indexed as
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.