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Psychedelics and Large-Scale Brain Networks: University of Michigan Medical School Michigan Psychedelic Center
Psychedelic compounds profoundly alter conscious experience, producing changes in perception, cognition, and self-awareness while typically preserving wakefulness. In recent years, human neuroimaging studies have revealed that these experiential effects are accompanied by robust alterations in large-scale brain network organization. However, a unifying framework for understanding how psychedelic drugs reshape brain-wide communication remains an open challenge.
In this talk, Rui Dai, PhD, will present converging evidence from functional MRI studies across classical and non-classical psychedelics, as well as comparisons with sleep and anesthesia, to show that psychedelic states are characterized by increased integration across large-scale brain networks alongside heightened interaction complexity. These effects are most prominent along cortical hierarchies spanning unimodal sensory regions to transmodal association networks, suggesting a systematic reconfiguration of global information flow rather than isolated regional changes.
By contrasting psychedelic states with unconscious or diminished-consciousness states, this work highlights large-scale network integration as a core neural feature supporting conscious experience. Together, these findings position psychedelics as powerful tools for probing fundamental principles of brain-wide communication and the neural basis of consciousness.
https://umich.zoom.us/j/97773094165, Online. Free. https://michmed.org/rwYjRAdd this event to your calendar: Google | iCal