One week from today I will be presenting at Psychedelic Science 2025. I will be on a panel titled "Studies focused on neural circuits and dynamics". I get to take the stage with my coauthor @kfshinozuka!

How does the brain control consciousness? This deep-brain structure

A great opportunity to work on a new perspective with the one and only @kfshinozuka

Big up Clayton and co!— The Role of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Ego Dissolution and Emotional Arousal During the Psychedelic State

I want to express my gratitude to @Imperial_PRG for making this fMRI data open-source and @RCarhartHarris for helping us see this project through to publication. We hope to have the opportunity share this work in detail at @PsychedelicSci in June. (12/12)

Thank you to my thesis advisor Matt Howard and to all my co-authors, @kfshinozuka, @b_tromm, @otta_dps, @MendelKaelen, Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, @LeorRoseman, @ProfDavidNutt, @LionelBarnett2, and @RCarhartHarris (11/12)

We hope that this work will continue to expand our understanding of how psychedelics affect the brain and mental illness and potentially provide more insight into the therapeutic mechanisms of traditional pharmaceuticals, interventional psychiatry, and psychedelics. (10/12)

This work not only reveals a network within the brain that is correlated with the psychedelic experiences of ego dissolution and emotional arousal. It also has significant overlaps with areas of the brain that are aberrant in first-episode psychosis and schizophrenia. (9/12)

Upon graduation, I expand this work by integrating an MEG dataset that was collected on the same participants. This measured *directed* connectivity within each network, at various frequencies. My co-author @kfshinozuka has more details about that statistical analysis. (8/12)

This revealed an ‘ego dissolution network,’ consisting of the bilateral DLPFC, thalamus and fusiform face area. Right DLFPC activity also correlated with emotional arousal, revealing a statistically significant increase in connectivity with the left intraparietal sulcus. (7/12)

The shifts in these DLPFC seeds were then correlated with self-reported changes in ego dissolution and emotional arousal, measured immediately after each fMRI scan. (6/12)

Beginning with a generalized TMS stimulation point in the brain, I created a novel seed in the left and right DLPFC to observe changes in RSFC from placebo to LSD, using fMRI data from Imperial College London. (5/12)

The main insight from this conversation was: if rTMS and psychedelic assisted therapy both improve depression symptoms, they must have overlapping mechanisms of action. (4/12)

My hypothesis was inspired by an episode of the @hubermanlab podcast with @NolanRyWilliams where they discussed advances in rapid Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) for the treatment of depression utilizing the SAINT protocol. (3/12)

This work began as my master’s thesis at @KingsCollegeLon and is a hypothesis-driven investigation into how changes in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex correlate with changes in consciousness under LSD. (2/12)

I am happy to announce that my first manuscript “The Role of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Ego Dissolution and Emotional Arousal” has been published in Human Brian Mapping! https://t.co/ePd9dCSJHN (1/12)

Book Summary: “Inner Excellence” (A.J. Brown’s favorite sideline read: go birds! 🦅 )

👨‍🔬 Clayton is literally one of the most enthusiastic neuroscience researchers I've met during my master's at @KingsCollegeLon. 🧠 If you're interested in neuroimaging and/or psychedelic research, make sure to check out his profile & latest work with @ProfDavidNutt!

@CColeman_Neuro Congratulations! Very nice! Been waiting for this since ICPR last year! 👏👏👏

We hope that this work will continue to expand our understanding of how psychedelics affect the brain and mental illness and potentially provide more insight into the therapeutic mechanisms of traditional pharmaceuticals, interventional psychiatry, and psychedelics. (10/n)