ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Human brain effects of DMT assessed via EEG-fMRI.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 101 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
101 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 205 citations in OpenAlex.
- What fMRI studies say about the nature of the psychedelic effect: a scoping review.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Pooled it
- Synergistic, multi-level understanding of psychedelics: three systematic reviews and meta-analyses of their pharmacology, neuroimaging and phenomenology.Translational psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Spatiotemporal mapping of brain organisation following the administration of 2C-B and psilocybin.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Trial
- A short-acting psychedelic intervention for major depressive disorder: a phase IIa randomized placebo-controlled trial.Nature medicine · 2026Trial
- A novel psychedelic 5-HTJournal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2026Trial
- Large-scale brain connectivity changes following the administration of lysergic acid diethylamide, d-amphetamine, and 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Autonomic nervous system activity correlates with peak experiences induced by DMT and predicts increases in well-being.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2024Trial
- Acute effects of different types of cannabis on young adult and adolescent resting-state brain networks.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- Inter-individual variability in neural response to low doses of LSD.Translational psychiatry · 2024Trial
- 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
- Psychological and physiological effects of extended DMT.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2024Trial
- LSD reconfigures cortical dynamics through faster brain rhythms and increased fractal dimension.Communications biology · 2026Article
- The entropic brain today.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2026Review
- Resetting the hippocampal buffer: a neurocognitive account of psychedelic therapy for anxiety-related psychopathology.Psychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Unlocking spontaneous cognition in the age of data science.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Opposite network patterns of integration-segregation in psychedelic and sedated states of consciousness.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Psychedelics align brain activity with context.Nature · 2026Article
- Multi-metric evaluations of acute psychedelic effects on fMRI brain entropy.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Reorganization of Human Brain Waves Across Diverse States of Consciousness.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Human brain changes after first psilocybin use.Nature communications · 2026Article
41 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
15 authors at 8 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Psychedelics have attracted medical interest, but their effects on human brain function are incompletely understood. In a comprehensive, within-subjects, placebo-controlled design, we acquired multimodal neuroimaging [i.e., EEG-fMRI (electroencephalography-functional MRI)] data to assess the effects of intravenous (IV) N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) on brain function in 20 healthy volunteers. Simultaneous EEG-fMRI was acquired prior to, during, and after a bolus IV administration of 20 mg DMT, and, separately, placebo. At dosages consistent with the present study, DMT, a serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2AR) agonist, induces a deeply immersive and radically altered state of consciousness. DMT is thus a useful research tool for probing the neural correlates of conscious experience. Here, fMRI results revealed robust increases in global functional connectivity (GFC), network disintegration and desegregation, and a compression of the principal cortical gradient under DMT. GFC × subjective intensity maps correlated with independent positron emission tomography (PET)-derived 5-HT2AR maps, and both overlapped with meta-analytical data implying human-specific psychological functions. Changes in major EEG-measured neurophysiological properties correlated with specific changes in various fMRI metrics, enriching our understanding of the neural basis of DMT's effects. The present findings advance on previous work by confirming a predominant action of DMT-and likely other 5-HT2AR agonist psychedelics-on the brain's transmodal association pole, i.e., the neurodevelopmentally and evolutionarily recent cortex that is associated with species-specific psychological advancements, and high expression of 5-HT2A receptors.
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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 OpenQuestion graph.