A single 75 mg dose of MDMA impairs memory encoding by disrupting activity in the left middle frontal gyrus (BA10). In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 14 Ecstasy users completed a word-learning task during pharmaco-MRI. Under MDMA, performance on the experimental word list (which required encoding) was worse than under placebo. Encoding-related brain activity was found in frontal, temporal, and parietal regions, but MDMA specifically interfered with activation in the left middle frontal gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, and left cuneus. Only the middle frontal gyrus showed a correlation between brain activity and behavioral performance: during placebo, better performance corresponded with greater activation, but this relationship disappeared under MDMA.
Sufi Whirling Dervishes can spin continuously for an hour without experiencing vertigo, while a few minutes of spinning typically induces vertigo in healthy people. This unique long-term vestibular stimulation offers a model for understanding cortical networks that resist vertigo. Magnetic resonance imaging of 10 dervishes and 10 controls showed significantly thinner cortical areas in the dervishes, particularly in hubs of the default mode network and in motion perception and discrimination areas, including the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right lingual gyrus, left visual area 5/middle temporal, and left fusiform gyrus. The findings suggest a relationship between motion/body perception cortical networks and the ability to whirl for prolonged periods without dizziness.