Psychedelic substances exhibit complex interactions with the 'set and setting' of use, that is, the mental state of the user and the environment in which a psychedelic experience takes place. Despite these contextual variables' known importance, psychedelic research has lacked methodological rigor in reporting extra-pharmacological factors. This study aimed to generate consensus-based...
The physical basis of consciousness is one of the most intriguing open questions that contemporary science aims to solve. By approaching the brain as an interactive information system, complex network theory has greatly contributed to understand brain process in different states of mind. We study an non-ordinary state of mind by comparing resting-state functional brain networks of individuals...
Lucid dreaming (LD) began to be scientifically studied in the last century, but various religions have highlighted the importance of LD in their doctrines for a much longer period. Hindus' manuscripts dating back over 2,000 years ago, for example, divide consciousness in waking, dreaming (including LD), and deep sleep. In the Buddhist tradition, Tibetan monks have been practicing the "Dream...
Open problems abound in the theory of complex networks, which has found successful application to diverse fields of science. With the aim of further advancing the understanding of the brain's functional connectivity, we propose to evaluate a network metric which we term the geodesic entropy. This entropy, in a way that can be made precise, quantifies the Shannon entropy of the distance...
Dimethyltryptamines are entheogenic serotonin-like molecules present in traditional Amerindian medicine recently associated with cognitive gains, antidepressant effects, and changes in brain areas related to attention. Legal restrictions and the lack of adequate experimental models have limited the understanding of how such substances impact human brain metabolism. Here we used shotgun mass...
The entropic brain hypothesis holds that the key facts concerning psychedelics are partially explained in terms of increased entropy of the brain's functional connectivity. Ayahuasca is a psychedelic beverage of Amazonian indigenous origin with legal status in Brazil in religious and scientific settings. In this context, we use tools and concepts from the theory of complex networks to analyze...