Scientists say psychedelics boost your creativity

Psychedelic experiences involving strong visual hallucinations appear to activate the same brain areas as “natural” altered states involving high rates of visual imagery, most notably daydreaming and nighttime dreaming. By that thinking, in reducing activity in the DMN, psychedelics might reduce divergent thinking and actually impair creativity. Finally, the creative benefits of psychedelics may not be limited to normal doses. One study from the Netherlands showed that psychedelic microdosing could also enhance creative thinking. Although the research was preliminary, and did not use a control group, they found that microdoses of truffles containing psilocybin slightly improved scores of divergent thinking compared to a sober attempt at creativity tasks (Prochazkova et al, 2018).

• Excitingly, the study also found that a week after taking the psilocybin, the participants generated more novel ideas.
• Passionate about continuous learning, she dedicates herself to achieving harmonious synergy among nature, technology, and the human experience.
• We count how many answers they have, and they write down why they made that association, which designated objective raters then use to assess originality.
• These mechanisms can foster perceived social connection, which can lead to potential long-term impacts—improved romantic relationships and social life, reduced loneliness and social deficits, and stronger therapeutic alliances.

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As Fox and colleagues explained, these experiences have been compared, on the negative end of the spectrum, with psychosis and, on the positive end, with transcendent mystical experiences. The time following an acute psychedelic experience is pivotal for psychological transformation. Researcher Gül Dölen suggests that psychedelics can reopen “critical periods”—windows of heightened brain plasticity typically experienced only during youth. Psychedelics reportonpsychedelics.com may allow us to access this flexibility later in life, making the post-journey period essential for reassembling our sense of self. During this time, we can adjust how we interact with the world and perceive ourselves.

The psychedelic retreats at Synthesis are designed to allow for people to go on their own journeys, whatever they may be. Our one-on-one preparation sessions with facilitators, and careful observation and support during the session, make the retreat weekend an ideal time to explore your creative potential and discover new things. Divergent thinking is a form of thinking that helps people connect different concepts in their minds, and come up with multiple solutions to complex problems. It is often linked with creativity, and also psychological flexibility (the ability to adapt to, and cope with, challenging emotions). On the flip-side, convergent thinking is more rigid and streamlined, helping us come up with logical and accurate single solutions to problems – it’s not as important for creativity. He described the experience as being profoundly personally meaningful, saying that even people who knew him well could not understand everything about him if they hadn’t tried psychedelics.

Psychedelic Research Reborn: Opening the Doors of Creativity and Social Connection

In this post, we explore how these substances unlock new dimensions of creativity, their impact on music during the psychedelic experience, and how playing music can become a powerful tool for integration. We also used the “picture concept task,” which assesses both divergent and convergent thinking. Here we show people three rows of three pictures, and they have to make associations between them. There is always one correct answer, with the number of correctly identified associations across the task serving as a benchmark for more convergent creativity. Then, after finding the correct answer, we ask them to come up with all of the alternative creative answers they can. We count how many answers they have, and they write down why they made that association, which designated objective raters then use to assess originality.

This infectious and exhilarating environment attracted performers and collaborators, replacing previous tensions with play and laughter. Creating with and for those who showed up became natural, eliminating the need for control. Additionally, paying hourly for rehearsals professionally improved the studio’s vibe. Ultimately, psychedelics offer a unique and potent way to explore and expand creative boundaries.

Today, the influence of psychedelics continues to evolve, driven by artists who are using music as a medium for healing, introspection, and community. Jon Hopkins, an electronic musician, has become a leading figure in this movement. Albums like Music for Psychedelic Therapy are designed to guide listeners through inner journeys, blending ambient soundscapes with deep emotional resonance. In the visual arts, psychedelic motifs became synonymous with the era’s ethos of freedom, experimentation, and self-discovery.

That said, previous work has found that while psychedelics decrease within-network DMN functional connectivity acutely, they increase DMN integrity sub-acutely, potentially via a neuroplastic effect on brain network function. Thus, it could be that the sub-acute psilocybin-induced increase in DMN functional connectivity facilitates the increased generation of novel ideas. Much of the recent interest in microdosing was triggered by its popularity among Silicon Valley tech workers as both a creativity enhancer and a productivity booster.

The piece delves into how substances like LSD and psilocybin are influencing designers’ approaches to problem-solving, empathic design systems, and reconnecting people with nature and each other. Fantasy, imagination, exploration, openness to possibilities, designing experiences and perspectives, experimentation, intuition, feeling, sketching, freewriting, deep listening, and discovery are all invaluable during this period. Viewing your life as a creative process aligns seamlessly with the reassembling of the self that can occur after a deep psychedelic journey.

As for what may be going on in the brain that sustains this persisting increase in new ideas, we found correlations between acutely decreased functional connectivity in the DMN and improved performance in divergent thinking-related cognition seven days after. So, in sum, decreased within-network functional connectivity of the DMN correlated with both an acute reduction in divergent thinking and a sub-acute increase in divergent thinking – this seems counterintuitive but may be in line with previous work. Levels of convergent thinking were assessed by the amount of correct answers the participants gave.

They definitely tried their best and were super stoked talking about this, which was a lot of fun – even though I did not understand everything they were saying. They told me afterwards that they actually realized something about their own research during the experience and was extremely thankful that they could take part in this study. During part of our experiment, participants are lying in an fMRI scanner, which is always nerve-racking for me because you never know how they are going to react to lying inside this massive machine while under the influence. When you get into an fMRI scanner, you actually pass through a very strong magnetic field that can make you feel somewhat dizzy and induce a feeling of turning around a corner even though you are going straight. Psychoplastogens produce neuroplastic changes by stimulating the release of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).