The entropic heart: Tracking the psychedelic state via heart rate dynamics
Fernando E. Rosas, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Christopher Timmermann, Andrea I. Luppi, Diego Candia‐rivera, Reza Abbasi-Asl, Adam Gazzaley, Morten L. Kringelbach, Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, Daniel Bor, Sarah N. Garfinkel, Robin Carhart-Harris
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) November 9, 2023 preprint DOI: 10.1101/2023.11.07.566008 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study |
|---|---|
| Population | Human participants under psychedelics |
| Interventions | LSD DMT psilocybin |
| Topics | Psilocybin |
| Keywords | Heart rate variability Artificial intelligence Hallucinogen Blood pressure |
| Citations | 14 |
| Key findings | Psychedelics consistently increase mean heart rate, high-frequency heart rate variability, and heart rate entropy, with heart rate entropy changes correlating with brain entropy increases. |
Abstract
A growing body of work shows that autonomic signals provide a privileged evidence-stream to capture various aspects of subjective and neural states. This work investigates the potential for autonomic markers to track the effects of psychedelics — potent psychoactive drugs with important scientific and clinical value. For this purpose, we introduce a novel Bayesian framework to estimate the entropy of heart rate dynamics under psychedelics. We also calculate Bayesian estimates of mean heart rate and heart rate variability, and investigate how these measures relate to subjective reports and neural effects. Results on datasets covering four drugs — lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), psilocybin, and sub-anaesthetic doses of the dissociative agent ketamine — show consistent increases in mean heart rate, high-frequency heart rate variability, and heart rate entropy during the psychedelic experience. Moreover, these effects have predictive power over various dimensions of the psychedelic experience. Changes in heart rate entropy were found to be correlated with increases in brain entropy, while other autonomic markers were not. Overall, our results show that a cost-efficient autonomic measure has the potential to reveal surprising detail about subjective and brain states, opening up a range of new research avenues to explore in both basic and clinical neuroscience.
Comparable studies
Other observational and cohort studies on psilocybin, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression: fMRI-measured brain mechanisms. Patients with treatment-resistant depression | 2017 | Observational cohort | n = 19 |
| Psychedelic effects of psilocybin correlate with serotonin 2A receptor occupancy and plasma psilocin levels Healthy volunteers | 2019 | Observational cohort | n = 8 |
| Increased spontaneous MEG signal diversity for psychoactive doses of ketamine, LSD and psilocybin Humans | 2017 | Observational study | |
| Classic psychedelic use is associated with reduced psychological distress and suicidality in the United States adult population. USA adult respondents from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2008-2012) | 2015 | Observational cohort | n = 190,000 |
| Prediction of Psilocybin Response in Healthy Volunteers Healthy volunteers | 2012 | Observational cohort | n = 409 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 11
- Autonomic nervous system activity correlates with peak experiences induced by DMT and predicts increases in well-being. Journal of Psychopharmacology October 1, 2024
- Classification schemes of altered states of consciousness. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews August 1, 2025
- Safety, tolerability and subjective effects of vaporized N,N-Dimethyltryptamine: A randomized double-blind clinical trial. European Neuropsychopharmacology June 17, 2025
- Psilocybin for disorders of consciousness: A case-report study. Clinical Neurophysiology May 1, 2025
- Dynamic medial parietal and hippocampal deactivations under DMT relate to sympathetic output and altered sense of time, space, and the self Imaging Neuroscience April 16, 2025
and 6 more in the library
Cites 36
- Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self Trends in Cognitive Sciences October 12, 2013
- The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2014
- REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics Pharmacological Reviews June 20, 2019
- Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences April 11, 2016
- Classic psychedelics: An integrative review of epidemiology, therapeutics, mystical experience, and brain network function. Pharmacology & Therapeutics May 1, 2019
and 31 more in the library