Psychedelic-assisted therapy holds potential for treating mental health conditions but is hindered by regulatory, methodological, and safety issues. The authors propose using artificial intelligence and virtual reality to simulate experiences akin to those from traditional psychedelic compounds, offering a novel approach to psychedelic-assisted therapy that could bypass some of these challenges.
A virtual reality simulation of a psychedelic experience, created by applying the Google DeepDream algorithm to a calming garden scene, enhanced cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control in healthy adults. Participants watched two 10-minute immersive VR videos: a standard garden and its hallucinated counterpart. After the hallucinatory video, they showed improved cognitive flexibility and reported greater absorption in the experience, though they found it less fluent. Both VR experiences reduced positive emotions, anxiety, heart rate, and sympathetic nervous system activity compared to before the videos. The combination of cognitive enhancement with a relaxed, awakened physiological state suggests such simulations might offer therapeutic benefits of psychedelics without their risks.