Time-resolved coupling between connectome harmonics and subjective experience under the psychedelic DMT.
Jakub Vohryzek, Andrea I Luppi, Selen Atasoy, Gustavo Deco, Robin L Carhart-Harris, Christopher Timmermann, Morten L Kringelbach
Author Information
Jakub Vohryzek: Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom. ORCID
Andrea I Luppi: Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom. ORCID
Selen Atasoy: Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom. ORCID
Gustavo Deco: Center for Brain and Cognition, Computational Neuroscience Group, Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. ORCID
Robin L Carhart-Harris: Centre for Psychedelic Research, Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom. ORCID
Christopher Timmermann: Centre for Psychedelic Research, Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom. ORCID
Morten L Kringelbach: Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom. ORCID
Exploring the intricate relationship between brain's structure and function, and how this affects subjective experience is a fundamental pursuit in neuroscience. Psychedelic substances offer a unique insight into the influences of specific neurotransmitter systems on perception, cognition and consciousness. Specifically, their impact on brain function propagates across the structural connectome - a network of white matter pathways linking different regions. To comprehensively grasp the effects of psychedelic compounds on brain function, we used a theoretically rigorous framework known as connectome harmonic decomposition. This framework provides a robust method to characterize how brain function intricately depends on the organized network structure of the human connectome. We show that the connectome harmonic repertoire under DMT is reshaped in line with other reported psychedelic compounds - psilocybin, LSD and ketamine. Furthermore, we show that the repertoire entropy of connectome harmonics increases under DMT, as with those other psychedelics. Importantly, we demonstrate for the first time that measures of energy spectrum difference and repertoire entropy of connectome harmonics indexes the intensity of subjective experience of the participants in a time-resolved manner reflecting close coupling between connectome harmonics and subjective experience.
