Ego dissolution as a collapse of integration, not a surge of entropy
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 18, 2026 Sören van Krunckelsven
When a 5-HT2A agonist (like LSD or DMT) and an NMDA antagonist (nitrous oxide) act together, the resulting ego-dissolving state is dominated by a collapse of long-range functional integration rather than a rise in local signal complexity. A whole-brain dynamic mean-field model on human structural connectomes, with rate-matched conditions to isolate mechanism, showed the combination produced a robust, dose-dependent decrease in functional connectivity (mean ΔFC = −56% ± 12% SD) and a small increase in signal complexity (ΔLZc = +0.9% ± 0.5% SD). The 5-HT2A entropy increase (+5.4%) was largely cancelled by N2O-driven hypersynchrony (−4.6%), making the net complexity change marginal while integration collapse was large. The authors conclude that the combined state is dissociation-dominated rather than entropy-dominated.