Microevidence for microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms: a double-blind placebo-controlled study of subjective effects, behavior, creativity, perception, cognition, and brain activity

Cavanna, Federico; Müller, Stephanie; Fuente, Laura Alethia de la; Zamberlán, Federico; Palmucci, Matías; Janeckova, Lucie; Kuchař, Martin; Pallavicini, Carla; Tagliazucchi, Enzo

doi:10.1101/2021.11.30.470657

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…We analyzed the effects of microdoses of Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms (0.5 g dried material, a typical microdose) (Polito & Stevenson, 2019;Szigeti et al, 2021;van Elk et al, 2021) on verbal reports. Data was obtained following a double-blind placebo-controlled experimental design with two different measurement weeks per participant (Cavanna, 2022). During each week, participants received either the active dose or the placebo and were interviewed about their feelings, expectation, perception, mood, creativity, and alertness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural language signatures of psilocybin microdosing

et al. 2022

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Serotonergic psychedelics are being studied as novel treatments for mental health disorders and as facilitators of improved well-being, mental function and creativity. Recent studies have found mixed results concerning the effects of low doses of psychedelics ("microdosing") on these domains. However, microdosing is generally investigated using instruments designed to assess larger doses of psychedelics, which might lack sensitivity and specificity for this purpose. Following a double-blind and placebocontrolled experimental design, we explored natural language as a resource to identify speech produced under the acute effects of psilocybin microdoses, focusing on variables known to be affected by higher doses: verbosity, semantic variability and sentiment scores. Except for semantic variability, these metrics presented significant differences between a typical active microdose of 0.5 g of psilocybin mushrooms and an inactive placebo condition. Moreover, machine learning classifiers trained using these metrics were capable of distinguishing between conditions with high accuracy (AUC≈0.8). Our results constitute first proof that low doses of serotonergic psychedelics can be identified from unconstrained natural speech, with potential for widely applicable, affordable, and ecologically valid monitoring of microdosing schedules.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural language signatures of psilocybin microdosing

et al. 2022

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“…We analyzed the effects of microdoses of Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms (0.5 g dried material, a typical microdose) (Polito & Stevenson, 2019; Szigeti et al, 2021; van Elk et al, 2021) on verbal reports. Data was obtained following a double-blind placebo-controlled experimental design with two different measurement weeks per participant (Cavanna, 2022). During each week, participants received either the active dose or the placebo and were interviewed about their feelings, expectation, perception, mood, creativity, and alertness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural language signatures of psilocybin microdosing

Sanz

Cavanna

Müller

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Serotonergic psychedelics are being studied as novel treatments for mental health disorders and as facilitators of improved well-being, mental function and creativity. Recent studies have found mixed results concerning the effects of low doses of psychedelics (microdosing) on these domains. However, microdosing is generally investigated using instruments designed to assess larger doses of psychedelics, which might lack sensitivity and specificity for this purpose. Following a double-blind and placebo-controlled experimental design, we explored natural language as a resource to identify speech produced under the acute effects of psilocybin microdoses, focusing on variables known to be affected by higher doses: verbosity, semantic variability and sentiment scores. Except for semantic variability, these metrics presented significant differences between a typical active microdose of 0.5 g of psilocybin mushrooms and an inactive placebo condition. Moreover, machine learning classifiers trained using these metrics were capable of distinguishing between conditions with high accuracy (AUC close to 0.8). Our results constitute first proof that low doses of serotonergic psychedelics can be identified from unconstrained natural speech, with potential for widely applicable, affordable, and ecologically valid monitoring of microdosing schedules.

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“…Anecdotal claims have been made that microdosing improves well-being and cognition (Fadiman & Korb, 2019;Polito & Stevenson, 2019;Rootman et al, 2022). Observational studies have generally confirmed these positive anecdotes (Anderson et al, 2019;Polito & Stevenson, 2019;Rootman et al, 2021), but placebo-controlled studies have not found robust evidence to support these claims (Cavanna et al, 2021;de Wit et al, 2022;Hutten et al, 2020;Szigeti et al, 2021;Yanakieva et al, 2019), arguing that the reported benefits may be explained by the placebo response.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for tolerance in psychedelic microdosing from the self-blinding microdose trial

Baumann¹,

Carhart-Harris²,

Nutt³

et al. 2022

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Microdosing is the practice of regularly using very low doses of psychedelic drugs. Anecdotal reports suggest that it may enhance well-being, creativity and cognition. Here, we use data from a self-blinding microdose trial, a large (n=240) placebo-controlled citizen science trial of microdosing to investigate whether tolerance develops during microdosing. We conceptualized tolerance as the relationship between correct microdose guess probability and the number of previous microdoses taken within the trial’s timeframe: if tolerance develops then, correct microdose guess probability should decrease with more microdoses taken. Mixed linear regression models show that correct microdose guess probability decreases with number of microdoses taken (mean±se: -.017±.007; p=.009**), suggesting that tolerance developed. Secondary post-hoc analysis revealed that this tolerance was present with LSD/LSD-analogue microdoses (mean±se: -.026±.007; p<.001**), but not with psilocybin microdoses (mean±se: .013±.014; p=.36). These results suggest that microdosers may need to periodically suspend their microdosing routine to avoid tolerance and that psilocybin may be better suited for long-term microdosing protocols.

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Microevidence for microdosing with psilocybin mushrooms: a double-blind placebo-controlled study of subjective effects, behavior, creativity, perception, cognition, and brain activity

Cited by 4 publications

References 75 publications

Natural language signatures of psilocybin microdosing

Natural language signatures of psilocybin microdosing

Natural language signatures of psilocybin microdosing

Evidence for tolerance in psychedelic microdosing from the self-blinding microdose trial

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