Scientific Data
May 21, 2026
Leonardo Novelli, Devon Stoliker, Tamrin Barta et al.
PsiConnect is a large-scale neuroimaging study designed to investigate context-dependent neural and subjective effects of psilocybin using multimodal neuroimaging. It combines functional, structural, and diffusion-weighted MRI with EEG to examine brain activity in 62 participants before and after a 19 mg dose of psilocybin. The design includes resting-state scans and three naturalistic...
arXiv (Cornell University)
November 23, 2025
Sin-Yee Yap, Fuad Noman, Junn Yong Loo et al.
Psychedelics, such as psilocybin, reorganise large-scale brain connectivity, yet how these changes are reflected across electrophysiological (electroencephalogram, EEG) and haemodynamic (functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) networks remains unclear. We present Brain-MGF, a multimodal graph fusion network for joint EEG-fMRI connectivity analysis. For each modality, we construct graphs...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
September 12, 2025
Navid Shams Masjedi, Adeel Razi
preprint
Abstract Decades of cross-species research highlight the claustrums extensive bidirectional connectivity with cortical and subcortical regions, implicating it in higher-order cognitive processes requiring synchronized brain states. Psychedelics may disrupt this synchrony by modulating claustro-cortical signaling, reflected by the dissolution of cortical network signatures. Using spectral...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
August 22, 2025
Matthew D. Greaves, Tamrin Barta, Leonardo Novelli et al.
preprint
Abstract The extent to which anatomical connectivity constrains pharmacologically altered brain dynamics remains poorly understood. Here, we combined psilocybin administration with a structurally informed effective-connectivity model to examine how structural connectivity shapes directed inter-regional influences across experiential contexts. Using dynamic causal modeling embedded in a...
medRxiv
June 25, 2025
Devon Stoliker, Fosco Bernasconi, Olaf Blanke et al.
1 citation
preprint
Abstract Serotonergic psychedelics alter self-boundaries and can induce out-of-body experiences (OBEs)—the sense of being located outside one’s physical body. While OBEs also occur in clinical conditions and can be experimentally induced, their neural basis under psychedelics remains underexplored. In an open-label, baseline-controlled MRI study of 62 healthy adults administered psilocybin, we...
arXiv Preprint Archive
June 23, 2025
Moein Khajehnejad, Forough Habibollahi, Devon Stoliker et al.
Foundation models are transforming neuroscience but are often prohibitively large, data-hungry, and difficult to deploy. Here, we introduce BrainSymphony, a lightweight and parameter-efficient foundation model with plug-and-play integration of fMRI time series and diffusion-derived structural connectivity, allowing unimodal or multimodal training and deployment without architectural changes...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
April 14, 2025
Leonardo Novelli, Devon Stoliker, Tamrin Barta et al.
3 citations
preprint
ABSTRACT PsiConnect is a large-scale neuroimaging study designed to investigate the neural and subjective effects of psilocybin using multimodal neuroimaging. It combines functional, structural, and diffusion-weighted MRI with EEG to examine brain activity in 62 participants before and after a 19 mg dose of psilocybin. The design includes resting-state scans and three naturalistic conditions:...
Molecular Psychiatry
April 1, 2025
Devon Stoliker, Katrin H. Preller, Leonardo Novelli et al.
19 citations
Visual alterations under classic psychedelics can include rich phenomenological accounts of eyes-closed imagery. Preclinical evidence suggests agonism of the 5-HT2A receptor may reduce synaptic gain to produce psychedelic-induced imagery. However, this has not been investigated in humans. To infer the directed connectivity changes to visual connectivity underlying psychedelic visual imagery in...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
March 11, 2025
Devon Stoliker, Leonardo Novelli, Moein Khajehnejad et al.
8 citations
preprint
Abstract Psychedelics can profoundly alter consciousness by reorganising brain connectivity; however, their effects are contextsensitive. To understand how this reorganisation depends on the context, we collected and comprehensively analysed the largest psychedelic neuroimaging dataset to date. Sixty-two adults were scanned with functional MRI and EEG during rest and naturalistic stimuli...
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
May 1, 2024
Mihai Avram, Felix Müller, Katrin H. Preller et al.
13 citations
While the exploration of serotonergic psychedelics as psychiatric medicines deepens, so does the pressure to better understand how these compounds act on the brain. We used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design and administered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), and d-amphetamine in 25 healthy participants. By using spectral dynamic causal...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
March 1, 2024
Tim Bayne, Anil K. Seth, Marcello Massimini et al.
Which systems/organisms are conscious? New tests for consciousness ('C-tests') are urgently needed. There is persisting uncertainty about when consciousness arises in human development, when it is lost due to neurological disorders and brain injury, and how it is distributed in nonhuman species. This need is amplified by recent and rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI), neural...
Biological Psychiatry
January 5, 2024
Devon Stoliker, Leonardo Novelli, Adeel Razi et al.
42 citations
Our findings suggest that temporary amygdala signal attenuation is associated with mechanistic changes to resting-state network connectivity. These changes are significant for altered cognition and perception and suggest targets for research investigating the efficacy of psychedelic therapy for internalizing psychiatric disorders. More broadly, our study suggests the value of quantifying the...
Biological Psychiatry
February 1, 2023
Devon Stoliker, Leonardo Novelli, Franz X. Vollenweider et al.
49 citations
Classic psychedelic-induced ego dissolution involves a shift in the sense of self and a blurring of the boundary between the self and the world. A similar phenomenon is identified in psychopathology and is associated with the balance of anticorrelated activity between the default mode network, which directs attention inward, and the salience network, which recruits the dorsal attention network...
October 10, 2022
Devon Stoliker, Adeel Razi
Sixty healthy volunteers took magic mushrooms in a lab, and scientists recorded their brains during their experience. Approximately half of the Australian population will experience a mental health disorder during their lifetime, and scientists are turning to an unlikely place in the search for treatment. Researchers at Monash University are scanning the brains of healthy […]
Pharmacological Reviews
September 9, 2022
Devon Stoliker, Adeel Razi, Gary F. Egan et al.
83 citations
Neuroimaging studies of psychedelics have advanced our understanding of hierarchical brain organization and the mechanisms underlying their subjective and therapeutic effects. The primary mechanism of action of classic psychedelics is binding to serotonergic 5-HT2A receptors. Agonist activity at these receptors leads to neuromodulatory changes in synaptic efficacy that can have a profound...
medRxiv
September 9, 2022
Devon Stoliker, Leonardo Novelli, Franz X. Vollenweider et al.
4 citations
preprint
Abstract Classic psychedelics alter sense of self and patterns of self-related thought. These changes are hypothesised to underlie their therapeutic efficacy across internalising pathologies such as addiction and depression. Using resting-state functional MRI images from a randomised, double blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 24 healthy adults under 0.215mg/kg psilocybin, we...
Frontiers in Neuroscience
March 17, 2022
Devon Stoliker, Gary F. Egan, Adeel Razi
19 citations
Evidence suggests classic psychedelics reduce the precision of belief updating and enable access to a range of alternate hypotheses that underwrite how we make sense of the world. This process, in the higher cortices, has been postulated to explain the therapeutic efficacy of psychedelics for the treatment of internalizing disorders. We argue reduced precision also underpins change to...
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 28, 2019
Katrin H. Preller, Adeel Razi, Peter Zeidman et al.
303 citations
Psychedelics exert unique effects on human consciousness. The thalamic filter model suggests that core effects of psychedelics may result from gating deficits, based on a disintegration of information processing within cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) feedback loops. To test this hypothesis, we characterized changes in directed (effective) connectivity between selected CTSC regions after...