Exploring the effect of microdosing psychedelics on creativity in an open-label natural setting

In a non-blinded experiment (n=38) with microdoses of psilocybin, participants showed an improvement on convergent and divergent creativity tests.

Abstract

“Introduction Taking microdoses (a mere fraction of normal doses) of psychedelic substances, such as truffles, recently gained popularity, as it allegedly has multiple beneficial effects including creativity and problem-solving performance, potentially through targeting serotonergic 5-HT2A receptors and promoting cognitive flexibility, crucial to creative thinking. Nevertheless, enhancing effects of microdosing remain anecdotal, and in the absence of quantitative research on microdosing psychedelics, it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions on that matter. Here, our main aim was to quantitatively explore the cognitive-enhancing potential of microdosing psychedelics in healthy adults.

Methods During a microdosing event organized by the Dutch Psychedelic Society, we examined the effects of psychedelic truffles (which were later analyzed to quantify active psychedelic alkaloids) on two creativity-related problem-solving tasks: the Picture Concept Task assessing convergent thinking and the Alternative Uses Task assessing divergent thinking. A short version of the Ravens Progressive Matrices task assessed potential changes in fluid intelligence. We tested once before taking a microdose and once while the effects were expected to be manifested.

Results We found that both convergent and divergent thinking performance was improved after a non-blinded microdose, whereas fluid intelligence was unaffected.

Conclusion While this study provides quantitative support for the cognitive-enhancing properties of microdosing psychedelics, future research has to confirm these preliminary findings in more rigorous placebo-controlled study designs. Based on these preliminary results, we speculate that psychedelics might affect cognitive metacontrol policies by optimizing the balance between cognitive persistence and flexibility. We hope this study will motivate future microdosing studies with more controlled designs to test this hypothesis.”

Authors: Luisa Prochazkova, Dominique P. Lippelt, Lorenza S. Colzato, Martin Kuchar, Zsuzsika Sjoerds & Bernhard Homme

Notes

The third author has been under investigation by Leiden University, see this report by Retraction Watch. This paper is probably not affected by this.

This paper was also (maybe too optimistically) analysed by Psillow.

The paper does a good job of defining creativity and the circumstances under which it’s influenced. Next to mentioning that mood and flexibility can boost divergent thinking, they state:

“Creativity is a multilayered phenomenon, commonly defined as the ability to generate ideas, solutions, or products that are both novel and appropriate (e.g., Amabile 1996; Sternberg and Lubart 1999). Creativity is not a unitary function but consists of a number of subcomponents (Wallas 1926) that provide different, to some degree opposing cognitive challenges. It is crucial to distinguish between convergent thinking, which requires identification of a single solution to a well-defined problem (Mednick 1962), and divergent thinking, which requires the collection of many possible solutions to a loosely defined problem (Guilford 1967).

Of further importance to our present study is the fact that creative thinking is not a hardwired virtue. Several behavioral studies have shown that the processes underlying creative thinking can be systematically enhanced and impaired by both behavioral interventions, such as meditation, as well as, psychopharmacological agents, as for instance cannabis, tyrosine, and Adderall.“

The study looked at many different interaction effects, but found none for weight, body mass index, ingested dosage, and prior experience.

What they also considered was a possible testing effect, participants scoring higher because they did a similar test twice. Earlier studies point to this not being a problem, what could be a confounding factor is an expectation effect (e.g. the participants tried harder at the second test moment, 1.5 hours after microdosing). A similar effect (placebo) effect is often reported with microdosing (related to mood).

The current study contradicts the findings by Kuypers et al (2016) that studied the effects of a psychedelic/high dose of ayahuasca on creativity. In that study, they only found positive effects on divergent thinking, not on convergent thinking. One possible explanation for the difference is the large difference in dosage and a possible inverted U shape of the effects.

“Previous research has shown a relationship between 5-HT2A receptor activity and goal-directed behavior likely due to indirect modulation of DA release (Vollenweider et al. 1999; Sakashita et al. 2015; Dalley et al. 2002; Boureau and Dayan 2011). Dopamine-related adaptive behavior follows an inverted U shape (van Velzen et al. 2014), suggesting that smaller doses, such as the microdoses ingested by the participants in our current study, are more likely to move participants towards the most efficient mid-zone of the performance function than higher doses do.”

“Microdosing therefore might promote the speed or smoothness of switching between persistence and flexibility—an ability that Mekern et al. (2019a, b) refer to as “adaptivity.””

Summary

Taking microdoses of psychedelic substances, such as truffles, has been claimed to enhance creativity and problem-solving performance. However, there is no quantitative research on microdosing psychedelics in healthy adults.

Introduction

Major news outlets are reporting on the growing number of professionals using small doses of psychedelics to boost their productivity and creativity at work. This practice is referred to as microdosing, and may be a potentially interesting cognitive enhancer in healthy individuals.

Psychedelics were extensively used in experimental research and clinical settings throughout the 1960s, but were made illegal in most countries worldwide as a reaction to the rising counterculture. Now, psychedelics are starting to reappear as a genuine and promising area of research within experimental and clinical psychology, as well as psychiatry.

Psilocybin is a potent neuropharmacological agent with a strong modulatory effect on brain processes. Even very low doses of psilocybin were rated clearly psychoactive by most of the volunteers.

Psychedelics such as psilocybin exert their effects by directly binding to serotonin 2A receptors (5-HT2A). Psychedelics have been shown to increase subjective sense of wellbeing, optimism, and openness in humans, and have been shown to have anxiolytic, anti-depressant, anti-compulsive, and anti-addictive properties.

Psychedelics may improve mental flexibility through the alleged benefits in creativity. However, convergent thinking and divergent thinking are complementary and all available creativity tasks require the integration of both of these abilities to some degree.

The processes underlying creative thinking can be systematically enhanced and impaired by behavioral interventions, such as meditation, and psychopharmacological agents, such as cannabis, tyrosine, and Adderall.

Ayahuasca improved divergent thinking performance, while decreasing convergent thinking performance, in a recent study. Although this study may seem to provide a useful starting point, it is hampered by several disadvantages, including the fact that Ayahuasca must be combined with monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) for its effect to take place. Additionally, the qualitative experience induced by large doses of Ayahuasca may differ substantially from psychedelic experience induced by microdosing.

In a natural setting, the effects of microdosing truffles on human cognition were studied. The exact amount of active substance potentially leading to the found effects was determined. We assessed convergent and divergent thinking separately, and fluid intelligence was measured using Raven’s Progressive Matrices Task. We expected improvements on the AUT after microdosing, as mood and flexibility are two factors that boost divergent thinking. Due to a lack of relevant previous studies and subjectivity of self-reports, the effect of microdosing on convergent thinking was difficult to predict. However, microdosing may also improve both convergent and divergent thinking.

Procedure

The experiment was conducted during a microdosing event organized by the Psychedelic Society of the Netherlands (PSN). Participants were presented with envelopes containing the informed consents and were guided through the experimental tasks by one of the experimenters.

Participants were allowed to perform the task themselves, and their performance was assessed in a group setting free from outside distraction during both sessions. The tasks consisted of the Picture Concept Task, the Alternate Uses Task, and the Raven’s Progressive Matrices Task.

Participants took pre-measured psychedelic truffles after finishing the experimental tasks in the first session. The dosage was based on body weight, with low, average, and high body weight criteria being used. The doses provided to participants were in a meaningful range of a microdose, which is around one tenth to one sixteenth of a regular dose. Additionally, data on participants’ height, body weight, and ingested dose of truffles were independently collected by the researchers.

About 1.5 hours after consuming truffles, participants were asked to take part in a second session of the experiment. They filled in a questionnaire on medical health, psychedelic and general drug use, and general personal information.

Sample

38 out of 80 attendees volunteered in our experiment, and 38 completed the RPM, 27 completed the PCT, and 33 completed the AUT. 11 participants were excluded due to incorrect interpretation of the task instructions, and two participants were excluded due to unable to read the individuals’ writing.

Truffle analysis

Dried truffle samples were analyzed at the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague (UCT) to determine the exact amount of active substances potentially leading to the found effects. The concentration of the four alkaloids was almost identical in all three samples, and the differences were lower than the estimated measurement errors.

Psilocybin, the most abundant alkaloid in psychedelic truffles, is quickly metabolized into psilocin in the human body through dephosphorylation. Baeocystin and norbaeocystin may also quickly metabolize into N-demethylated psilocin derivatives.

Picture concept task

The PCT is a visual creativity task that involves finding a common association between several images. The correct solution is a common association between one picture from each row.

Participants had 30 s per item to find the solution to a PowerPoint presentation. They were instructed to mark and name the common association between the pictures on the PCT response sheet.

Alternate Uses Task

The AUT is used in research on creativity to measure divergent thinking performance. Participants were presented with a common household object and given 5 min to think of as many possible uses for the object.

Responses are scored on the total number of responses, flexibility, elaboration and originality of the response. Originality is calculated by dividing the total number of responses by all subjects, once by 5% and once by 1%.

Out of four measures, flexibility is the most reliable and theoretically most transparent index of divergent thinking, while fluency neglects the quality of responses and originality is highly sample-dependent.

Raven’s Progressive Matrices

The RPM was developed by Raven (1938) to measure fluid intelligence. A shortened 12-item version was used in this study.

In our experiment, participants had to solve a series of 2 x 2 or 3 x 3 matrices of pictures in which the lower right picture was always missing. They had to mark the correct solution by circling it on paper.

Analyses

We performed separate analyses to test for possible interactions between time-point (pre- versus post-truffle ingestion) and participants’ body weight, ingested dose, and prior experience with psychedelic substances on the dependent measures. We did not find any significant interactions, so we dropped these factors from any subsequent analyses.

Psychedelic content in truffle sample

The Forensic Laboratory of Biologically Active Substances confirmed the presence of psychedelic alkaloids in three truffle samples. Psilocybin was the most abundant alkaloid, followed by psilocin and baeocystin.

Interaction effects with weight, body mass index, ingested dosage, and prior experience

We tested for interaction effects between factors on all dependent measures using Repeated Measures ANOVAs, but none of the factors significantly interacted with the independent factor time-point.

Divergent thinking

A multivariate Repeated Measures ANOVA showed that the second session had a significant effect on fluency, flexibility, and originality scores, while elaboration scores failed to reach significance.

Discussion

We observed that participants who consumed a microdose of magic truffles showed an increase in divergent idea generation and an increase in convergent thinking, as well as an increase in fluid intelligence. This suggests that microdosing improves creativity, but not more general analytic cognition.

We cannot rule out the possibility that changes from the first to the second time-point of measurement are due to the impact of other factors than the microdosed truffles, but we consider that possibility not very likely.

Studies on convergent thinking have not shown evidence of improved performance with multiple testing, and a recent training study has not revealed any (positive) training effects on AUT performance.

It is possible that the increased performance from the first to the second time-point reflects an effect of expectation. Expectation effects are widely studied but not well understood, and are likely to have comparable impact on psychological functions as real drug effects.

Microdosing psychedelic substances improves both divergent and convergent thinking. Intelligence was not improved, suggesting that this effect was rather selective, but the possibility remains that the Raven was less sensitive to the intervention than the other measures were.

Some previous empirical dissociations of persistence and flexibility were related to dopaminergic functioning, such as in behavioral genetic studies demonstrating that polymorphisms supporting efficient dopaminergic functioning in the frontal cortex promote persistence while polymorphisms supporting efficient striatal dopaminergic functioning promote flexibility.

Psilocybin belongs to a group of tryptamines that are thought to exert their primary psychedelic effects through activity at the serotonergic 5-HT2A receptor. This receptor is associated with an increase in associative learning and the ability to adapt behavior more flexibly.

The 5-HT2A receptors are widely distributed in the brain and are likely to have important functional implications in learning and memory retrieval. However, the function of the 5-HT system remains Belusive.

Although the assumption of a link between psychedelics and an unconstrained brain state fits well with our findings on divergent thinking, it does not seem to be consistent with our observations on convergent thinking. Previous research has shown that dopaminergic modulation of 5-HT2A receptor activity can improve goal-directed behavior, and that microdosing can enhance motivation and focus, and reduce distractibility and procrastination.

Microdoses of truffle and 5-HT2A agonist may improve processes that are shared by convergent and divergent thinking, irrespective of the existing differences. Microdoses might promote the speed or smoothness of switching between persistence and flexibility, an ability that Mekern et al. refer to as Badaptivity.

Limitations

The limitations of our study include the fact that we used a quasi-experimental design, were not blind to the manipulation, and were unable to collect data from a control group. Moreover, we were unable to quantify possible learning effects, or identify and quantify possible placebo/expectation effects. Another possible objection might be that mood contributed to our findings, but we also found positive effects for convergent thinking, which has not shown to benefit from positive mood. Furthermore, the subjective strength of the experience could have played some role in our findings.

Conclusion

Microdoses of psychedelic substances might prove to be a promising alternative to large doses of psychedelic substances, as they could eliminate the risks of challenging experiences while maintaining the potential benefits of psychedelic substances on human emotion and cognition.