Imperial College London
Alternate

Professor Robin Carhart-Harris

Faculty of Medicine, Department of Brain Sciences

Visiting Professor
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7992r.carhart-harris

 
 
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Assistant

 

Miss Bruna Cunha +44 (0)20 7594 7992

 
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Location

 

Burlington DanesHammersmith Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Schartner:2017:10.1038/srep46421,
author = {Schartner, MM and Carhart-Harris, RL and Barrett, AB and Seth, AK and Muthukumaraswamy, SD},
doi = {10.1038/srep46421},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
title = {Increased spontaneous MEG signal diversity for psychoactive doses of ketamine, LSD and psilocybin},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep46421},
volume = {7},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - What is the level of consciousness of the psychedelic state? Empirically, measures of neural signal diversity such as entropy and Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity score higher for wakeful rest than for states with lower conscious level like propofol-induced anesthesia. Here we compute these measures for spontaneous magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals from humans during altered states of consciousness induced by three psychedelic substances: psilocybin, ketamine and LSD. For all three, we find reliably higher spontaneous signal diversity, even when controlling for spectral changes. This increase is most pronounced for the single-channel LZ complexity measure, and hence for temporal, as opposed to spatial, signal diversity. We also uncover selective correlations between changes in signal diversity and phenomenological reports of the intensity of psychedelic experience. This is the first time that these measures have been applied to the psychedelic state and, crucially, that they have yielded values exceeding those of normal waking consciousness. These findings suggest that the sustained occurrence of psychedelic phenomenology constitutes an elevated level of consciousness - as measured by neural signal diversity.
AU  - Schartner,MM
AU  - Carhart-Harris,RL
AU  - Barrett,AB
AU  - Seth,AK
AU  - Muthukumaraswamy,SD
DO  - 10.1038/srep46421
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 2045-2322
TI  - Increased spontaneous MEG signal diversity for psychoactive doses of ketamine, LSD and psilocybin
T2  - Scientific Reports
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep46421
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/54581
VL  - 7
ER  -
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