Psychedelics conference taps into creative cognition, episodic memory and the brain

29 Mar 2023 --- New psychedelics research on the short and long-term effects on creativity, memory and treatment options reveals benefits on creativity while stressing caution on memory accuracy. Scientists dove into recent study findings at a symposium on psychedelics and cognition at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) in San Francisco yesterday.

Manoj Doss, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Chicago and speaker at yesterday’s conference, studies episodic memory, focusing on the effects of psychoactive drugs on emotional episodic memory.

“Despite psychedelics having some of the most interesting subjective effects of any psychoactive drug, they’re generally being shown to impair cognition like most psychoactive drugs,” says Doss.

“One reason for this is that cognitive neuroscientists have been less involved with this work, so when the impact of psychedelics on cognition is measured, the tasks tend to be relatively simple and outdated,” he adds.

Human brain curiosity
The role of neurotransmitters and interest in overall brain science from psilocybin and other psychedelics has aroused scientists’ curiosity. It has led to further research on how they might be used as tools to treat mental illness. 

Cognitive neuroscientists are investigating the effects of psychedelic drugs on cognition using behavioral and clinical studies.

Mason found an increase in novel ideas seven days after the psychedelic exposure, and behavioral changes in creativity were supported by brain imaging.“There are massive over-arching gaps in our knowledge regarding psychedelics and cognition,” says Natasha Mason, postdoc researcher at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, and a speaker at the CNS symposium.

“There is a huge surge of interest in these substances therapeutically, but until now, no neurocognitive account ties acute and persisting psychedelic-induced changes in cognition with long-term therapeutic response.”

Spontaneous creativity
Mason and her team investigate the impact of a single-dose treatment – whether a moderate dose of psilocybin affects creative cognition – for both short and long-run effects.

Prior research by Manos and her team found increased “spontaneous creative insights” and decreased task-specific and deliberate creativity from psilocybin. 

Additionally, they found an increase in novel ideas seven days post the psychedelic exposure, and behavioral changes in creativity were supported by brain imaging.

“If there is a persistent, subacute change in creative cognition, maybe we can use this period to help people integrate their acute insights with a therapist and develop new, more effective strategies that facilitate adaptive interpretation and coping abilities,” says Manos.

Memory encoding
Manos highlights that further research and a better understanding of how the substances affect different aspects of memory are needed. 

At the CNS conference, Doss presented ten datasets from previous studies on how psychedelics influence episodic memory and found that psilocybin and MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) may enhance the encoding of memories that rely on familiarity. 

However, the drugs may impair memory encoding that recalls specific details. This was in comparison to other psychedelics, such as ketamine, which impaired both types of memory encoding.

“Interestingly, non-drug studies have found that when recollection fails, and familiarity is high, peculiar phenomena emerge, reminiscent of someone on psychedelics, such as déjà vu and premonition,” says Doss, and adds:

“Although psychedelics may help some come to tangible insights, much of the psychedelic experience might be turning up the gain of such feelings of familiarity or insight, and like non-drug studies that can induce such feelings through cognitive manipulations, these feelings can potentially be misattributed to unrelated stimuli or ideas, giving rise to false memories and illusory insights.”

“I find it quite an exciting study, as despite this historical association between psychedelic use and creativity, it is the first modern trial to assess this in a scientifically rigorous way,” says Manos.

Doss previously said in a podcast by The Nature and Nurture that enhancing one thing and impairing another is not always good. Doss says that caution should be used as psychedelics might create false memories.

“They [people on psychedelics] feel that they have an insight, even though they don’t. These are all things we are not sure it’s a good thing, as when the people are under the influence, they are not in touch with reality.” 

He further adds that this might create false memories. “I think we need to worry a bit about these drugs, but I also think they have benefits. I just think we need to be a bit cautious about how beneficial they are and how much meaning the clinicians should attribute to the meaning that the patients are attributing to their insights. ”

Hippocampus activities
Doss details that most psychoactive drugs, including psychedelics, impair hippocampal-dependent recollection-based encoding. 

“Psychedelics may uniquely enhance cortically-dependent familiarity-based encoding. These impairments and enhancements of Tulving’s conceptions of ‘autonoetic’ and ‘noetic’ consciousness coincide with how psychedelics impair one’s sense of self – ego dissolution – and drive feelings of insight – noetic quality.”

“Having a negative sense of self or a defining traumatic moment may thus come to be coded in the cortex, especially after years of suffering, and maladaptive representations may be particularly difficult to disrupt when new information coming in is biased by a negative sense of self and recent negative experiences,” Doss explains.

Further arguing that psychedelics could provide an opportunity to “rapidly overwrite maladaptive memories and, perhaps, even provide a fresh set of contextual influences that aid new encoding even once one is sober.”

Doss remarks that there is still a need to understand how these drugs impact memory and cognition and the intersection of psychotherapy and psychedelics. For upcoming research, he looks at how certain types of therapy or stimuli can help with psychedelics for therapeutic purposes. 

NutritionInsight will be hosting a webinar on April 18 that will discuss with a panel of experts about whether magic mushrooms and psychedelics could, or even should, enter into the mental health supplements space.

By Beatrice Wihlander