🚨 New science alert! Our cross-species study, now in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrates psychedelics distort how we should interpret functional brain imaging. 👇🧵 https://t.co/x3KbEcEawP #Neuroscience #Psychedelics #BrainImaging

Using dynamical systems theory, new research shows how a single arousal measure (e.g., pupil dilation) predicts multi-scale brain activity. Read the study from MIR neuroscientist Ryan Raut, PhD (@ryanvraut), and collaborators in @Nature. #MIRresearch.

#Psychedelic 5-HT2A receptor agonism alters neurovascular coupling and neuronal and hemodynamic measures of brain function @adamqbauer @jordacular @realJoshSiegel @JonahPadawer @OliverK28 @xwang167 @washumedicine @WashUMedMIR https://t.co/JXtKWdMCjP

All of this work was made possible by the wonderful team. @adamqbauer @jordacular @realJoshSiegel @OliverK28 @washumedicine @WashU @WashUMedMIR @Chaylavazquez And I want to thank the wonderful reviewers (among them was @TheBorisLab who made the paper all that much stronger

8/ So now what!? Next steps: • Validate in humans 🧍‍♂️ • Build “vascular correction” models • Revisit classic fMRI psychedelic studies

7/ Serotonin is vasoactive—it affects blood vessels, not just neurons (it’s right there in the etymology!). 🩸 Yet most imaging studies barely account for that.

6/ Take-home: neuronal and hemodynamic measures of brain function can dissociate under psychedelics, which has huge implications for interpreting human imaging data when under the influence of psychedelics.

5/ And here's a little mechanistic clue: blocking 5-HT₂A receptors (with MDL100907) predominantly reversed the dissociated reports of brain function → receptor-specific!?

4/ fMRI (BOLD) signals depend on blood flow. So, some “functional” effects in psychedelic imaging may reflect vascular—not neuronal—changes. We observe divergent patterns across multiple functional measures, including FC, modularity, power, and stimulus response (@every figure)

3/ Even tripper: we saw similar shifts in human psilocybin fMRI data.

2/ After DOI (blue trace, right), neurovascular coupling (the link between brain ⚡️and blood 🩸signals) went off script. The hemodynamic response got tighter—and even sprouted an acausal feature (suggesting an emergent vasculo-neuronal relation!). Wild stuff. 🤯

1/ We concurrently tracked pan-cortical neural ⚡️and hemodynamic 🩸signals before and after psychedelic intoxication in mice. SURPRISE: these signals reported different effects!

Here are all of the Epstein Files that have either been leaked or released. https://t.co/ab6F9mCgF4 (verified court documents) https://t.co/vV5AOoVzBK (verified pre-Bondi) Trump is on page 85, or pdf pg. 80 Trump’s name is circled. The circled individuals are the ones involved

@elonmusk Hey @grok - this argument happening between Elon Musk and Sam Altman demonstrates the danger of having a small group of humans make broad decisions about the future of AI, would you agree?

My recent email to @NIHDirector_Jay @RobertKennedyJr Please RT!

Another awesome push to caution interpretive power of fMRI while under acute intoxication of psychedelics! Big should out to @Rick_Zirkel @kwanalexc and @SN_Lab !!!

Excited to share our latest work is up on bioRxiv! Looking at capillary flow speed changes we show that psilocybin prolongs the neurovascular coupling response to a visual stimulus. 🍄🔬🧠🩸 Preprint: https://t.co/hiScWAbSZ1

“Thrilled to announce 14 papers accepted from our lab” The lab:

@elonmusk Nothing says “I have a drug problem” like posting a “clean” drug screening that nobody asked for

Channel 5 live from LA episode 1 covering night one of the LA Riots out now