Spatial privacy is clinical protection. Perpetual surveillance in shelters and on streets prevents emotional decompression, especially for women facing predation. A lockable door de-escalates chronic hyperarousal. Challenge paternalistic shelter rules in your city. #SovereignWealth
#HousingFirst
Search
19 results for “spatial_history”
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Spatial disparities in third-place accessibility: Evidence from older adults' mobility patterns in the Seoul metropolitan area https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275126008061?dgcid=rss_sd_all
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Spatial exclusion on public land: Fragmented governance and Vancouver's golf courses https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275126007080?dgcid=rss_sd_all
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Spatial governance under polycrisis: Reconfiguring agglomeration policy https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275126007328?dgcid=rss_sd_all
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Spatial-economic networks in global cities: Multinational firms and urban affiliations from 2010 to 2019 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275126006669?dgcid=rss_sd_all
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🛰️🔭 L'observatoire spatial Neil Gehrels Swift a effectué ses dernières observations scientifiques le 20 octobre. Il se trouve à 275 km d'altitude et rentrera dans l'atmosphère terrestre dans quelques semaines, la mission Swift Reboost ayant échoué pour rehausser son orbite.
Swift a observé plus de 2 000 sursauts gamma, les explosions les plus puissantes du cosmos.
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SOME SHARED SPATIAL/GIS ROLES & OPPORTUNITIES
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w/e October 23rd, 2026 | GLOBAL but North-America-focused (as currently based there)
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https://earthstuff.substack.com/p/some-shared-spatialgis-roles-and-a5e
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• I am NOT associated with HR/recruiting in ANY way
• Therefore, these are NOT endorsements, and there are no ‘referrals’ or the like for me
• I am simply sharing SOME roles I have seen – in the hope that they are of use to someone
• As such, I am not (and indeed can not) in any way ‘vet’ these roles (i.e., you are advised to conduct your own due diligence due to hideous, potential risks like fraudulent postings, ‘ghost jobs’, résumé/ATS ‘improvement’ scammers, etc, the listings that seem 'a little fluffy', the same (±) listings that appear week after week after week, whether a role is actually Remote (or if it is a 'Bait & Switch', used 'in a different way' or some such) or an overly confident/cynical 'fishing expedition - Be confident - but also cynical yourself of course.)
• Further, roles listed are in no specific order (i.e., a ‘running list’ as I ‘encountered’ them during the week)
• There is ZERO cost to access this list of spatial / GIS roles
• I am not (really) ‘mining’ US Federal government roles - with the ‘hiring freeze’, uncertainty, etc
• You can subscribe to the (free) weekly LinkedIn newsletter www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7397678824928366594 or also for free at earthstuff.Substack.com - if so inclined#fridayjobs #gischat #jobsonfriday #GIS #spatial #mapping #cartography #geography #job #jobopenings #hiring #newjob #employment #roles #GISJobs #NotARecruiter #fridayspatialjobs #scholarship #PhD #PostDoc #CareersInSpatial #career #openroles #Geomatics #GIS #Innovation #Growth #caveatNONemptor #LetsGetYouHired #GISCareer #GISStudents #PhD #postdoc #hiringalert #GISjobs #careeropportunity #NowHiring #spatialanalysis #GIS #Geospatial #GISSpecialist #Geomatics #OpenToWork
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Nonlinear and spatial spillover effects of manufacturing agglomeration on urban ecological resilience https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275126007018?dgcid=rss_sd_all
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Perceiving “city of proximity” beyond spatial closeness: Explaining travel and consumption behavior through perceptions and preferences https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275126006943?dgcid=rss_sd_all
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Ce genre de jeu permettant de simuler un vaisseau spatial me paraît un très bon outil de construction d'équipe. https://daid.github.io/EmptyEpsilon/#tabs=0,running-tabs=2 #game #simulation #vaisseaux
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Toward precision urban resilience: Integrating multimodal large language models with spatial analytics for fire risk governance https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275126006815?dgcid=rss_sd_all
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Gemini 4 Argon vise les tâches de software engineering de longue haleine, avec de meilleurs résultats en raisonnement spatial, en maths et en code visuel.
Dans Antigravity, il pilote Blender MCP en boucle autonome pour modéliser une pagode ou un jeu de course ⬇️
https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/📬 Ma veille dev, chaque vendredi par email → https://l.camilleroux.com/sig-UAD
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⚡️Podcast | Finding Manuland Atlas Ep. 4
Beside the founder sound M-N-, a second, spatial cryptotype surfaces at the Arzhan kurgan in Tuva and at Dashly-3: the square inside a circle that runs from the kurgan to the Buddhist mandala.
The podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/67BUBYhxeLDX8dgZFzP7U9
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My Letters to a Pre-Scientist About To Be Mailed - After Getting My One
(with some fun (hopefully!) geek stuff for the teacher & the rest of the class too 😊 )
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https://prescientist.org/ | https://www.facebook.com/prescientist <-- shared Letters To A Pre-Scientist home page – SIGN UP!
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[I had to write this out by hand for the ‘assigned’ student, I am SO out of practice, I hope they can read it – fun!!!!]
“Pairing Students with STEM Professionals Around the World
[They] pair middle schoolers with scientists, engineers, and technologists from around the world through snail mail. These personal connections shatter stereotypes, spark curiosity, and help students see themselves in a STEM career - sometimes for the very first time…”
#LettersToAPreScientist #secure #vetted #penpal #handwritten #STEM #K12 #GIS #spatial #geology #fun #science #technology #education#STEMeducation #STEMmentors #STEMcommunity #FutureScientists #NextGenSTEM #STEMoutreach #InspireSTEM #STEMcareers #snailmail #letterwriting #analoglove #STEMpenpals #oldschoolcool #handwriting #writtenwithlove #mentorshipmatters #giveback #communityengagement #MakeADifference #curiousminds #futureleaders #learningjourney #K12education #middleschoolmagic #nerds #geeks #nerdpower #embracingyourgeek
@Letters To A Pre-Scientist -
DATE: October 23, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Testosterone may help new brain cells survive, and timing could matter
URL: https://www.psypost.org/testosterone-may-help-new-brain-cells-survive-and-timing-could-matter/
New research in male rats suggests that the timing and duration of testosterone exposure may influence whether newly born brain cells survive to maturity. The study, published in Neuroscience, indicates that testosterone may be most effective at boosting the survival of young neurons during the later stages of their development, particularly within a part of the hippocampus involved in spatial learning and memory. These findings offer new insight into how male sex hormones support brain plasticity in adulthood.
Adult neurogenesis is the biological process by which the mature brain generates new functional nerve cells, or neurons, from dividing stem cells. This process takes place largely inside the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure located deep within the brain’s temporal lobe that is essential for learning, memory formation, and stress regulation. Specifically, new cells are born along a thin band of tissue called the subgranular zone, located within a subregion of the hippocampus known as the dentate gyrus.
Once these precursor cells divide, they migrate into the neighboring granule cell layer and begin extending communication fibers to other parts of the hippocampus. Over several weeks, the surviving cells mature into functional neurons that are highly excitable and adaptable, helping the brain form new circuits and store new memories. However, roughly half of all newly generated cells in the hippocampus naturally die off within the first month before they can fully integrate into the brain’s network.
Hormones are among the major internal factors that regulate how many of these young cells survive. Testosterone, the primary male sex hormone, naturally declines as men age, and low circulating levels of the hormone are associated with an elevated risk of age-related memory decline and dementia, although results from clinical trials testing testosterone treatment for memory in older men have been mixed. In the body and brain, testosterone can act directly on androgen receptors or be converted by enzymes into other active hormones, such as estradiol, a form of estrogen, or dihydrotestosterone, a potent androgen.
“Growing clinical evidence has shown that testosterone can improve or sustain memory in aging men, potentially reducing the risk and severity of age-related memory loss, including Alzheimer’s disease,” senior study author Mark D. Spritzer, a professor of biology at Middlebury College, told PsyPost. “One mechanism by which testosterone may be having these effects is by acting as a neuroprotectant in the brain. The hippocampus is a region of the brain that is essential for learning and memory, and it is an area that degrades with age.”
Previous experiments in male rats have shown that removing the testes, and with them the main source of testosterone, does not change the rate at which new hippocampal cells are born, but it substantially reduces how many of those new cells survive. Restoring testosterone through daily injections for 30 consecutive days reliably rescues these young neurons. In contrast, several studies using shorter treatment windows of 15 to 21 days found no benefit for cell survival, while a recent experiment by the same research group showed that a brief five-day burst of testosterone given between days 11 and 15 after cell birth did improve survival.
This pattern raised questions about whether testosterone needs to build up over a full month to protect new neurons, or if young cells are simply more sensitive to the hormone during specific developmental stages. Between 11 and 30 days after birth, maturing neurons go through a sensitive window where they begin forming active connections, or synapses, with other brain regions. During this same timeframe, chemical signals from a neurotransmitter called GABA shift from exciting the young cells to inhibiting them, a transition that promotes proper maturation.
“We had previously shown that testosterone injections can improve levels of adult neurogenesis (proliferation and maturation of new neurons) within the hippocampus,” Spritzer explained. “However, we did not know whether or not specific periods of neuron development were more strongly influenced by testosterone. Therefore, the current experiment involved giving rats testosterone during different stages of neural development to assess the effects on adult neurogenesis. The ultimate goal is to better understand how testosterone influences the brain and cognition.”
To resolve the contradictions in earlier work, Spritzer, lead author Tatum W. Hamilton, and their colleagues at Middlebury College designed an experiment to test how different windows of testosterone exposure affect neuron survival at 30 days of age. They directly compared a full 30-day treatment against two 15-day treatments covering either the first half or the second half of the cells’ 30-day maturation period.
The researchers worked with 43 adult male Sprague-Dawley rats that were approximately 60 days old at the start of the study. All rats were housed individually to control for social variables, as prior work showed that testosterone’s effects on the brain are easier to detect in individually housed animals. One week after arriving at the laboratory, all of the rats underwent surgical castration to remove their natural source of testosterone, allowing the scientists to precisely control hormone levels through injections.
Eleven days after surgery, every rat received a single abdominal injection of bromodeoxyuridine, a synthetic compound commonly known as BrdU. When cells divide, they incorporate BrdU into their newly synthesized DNA, which permanently tags the exact batch of cells born during the brief window after the injection. By waiting 30 days and then counting how many BrdU-tagged cells remain in the brain, scientists can measure the survival rate of that specific generation of cells.
Starting the day after the BrdU injection, the rats were divided into six groups of six to eight animals each. Half of the groups received daily injections of testosterone propionate at a high physiological dose of 0.500 milligrams per rat; earlier work by the same group found that a lower dose of 0.125 milligrams had no effect on new neuron survival. The other half received inert sesame oil injections as a comparison control. These injections were administered during one of three time windows following the BrdU tag: an early period (days 1 to 15), a late period (days 16 to 30), or the full period (days 1 to 30).
On day 31, the researchers collected blood samples to verify hormone levels and extracted the rats’ brains for microscopic analysis. They sliced the entire hippocampus into thin sections and used chemical staining techniques to make the BrdU-tagged cells visible under a light microscope. A researcher who was blinded to which treatment each rat received counted the labeled cells across the granule cell layer and subgranular zone, as well as in an adjacent area called the hilus to check whether any changes were specific to the neurogenic zone.
The team also divided their cell counts between the dorsal (top/front) and ventral (bottom/back) portions of the dentate gyrus, because these two zones serve different functions. The dorsal hippocampus is primarily involved in spatial navigation and memory, whereas the ventral hippocampus mainly regulates stress and anxiety. Finally, using a laser-scanning confocal microscope and fluorescent markers, the researchers examined 50 randomly selected BrdU-tagged cells per rat to see how many also contained NeuN, a nuclear protein found in mature neurons.
Blood tests confirmed that rats receiving testosterone during the late period and the full 30-day period had elevated serum testosterone concentrations at the end of the experiment, averaging about 5.7 nanograms per milliliter, compared to less than 0.3 nanograms per milliliter in the oil-treated groups and the early-period testosterone group, which had stopped receiving hormone injections 16 days earlier.
Across the entire dentate gyrus, rats treated with testosterone had higher numbers of surviving BrdU-labeled cells in the neurogenic zone than rats given oil. Planned statistical comparisons between the hormone and oil groups within each time window showed that only the full 30-day testosterone treatment produced a statistically significant increase across the whole structure. Rats given testosterone during the late window (days 16 to 30) showed a trend toward higher cell survival across the whole dentate gyrus that fell just short of statistical significance, while early treatment (days 1 to 15) had no effect.
“The results suggest that testosterone may have an additive effect, which is a novel finding,” Spritzer noted. “Namely, longer exposure to testosterone increased neurogenesis to a greater degree.”
When the researchers examined the dorsal and ventral regions separately, a more specific pattern emerged. In the dorsal dentate gyrus, testosterone increased cell survival in both the full 30-day group and the late 16-to-30-day group, while the early 1-to-15-day group showed no benefit over oil injections. In the ventral dentate gyrus, testosterone had no effect on cell survival during any of the three treatment windows, although rats injected during the early period unexpectedly had fewer surviving cells in this region than rats injected during the late or full periods regardless of whether they received hormone or oil.
Fluorescent microscopy confirmed that roughly 79 to 87 percent of the surviving BrdU-tagged cells had matured into NeuN-positive neurons across all groups, regardless of whether the rats received testosterone or oil. Because the hormone did not alter the proportion of new cells that became neurons, the higher BrdU counts can be read as a greater number of surviving new neurons. No treatment differences were found in the overall tissue volume of the dentate gyrus or in cell counts within the neighboring hilus region.
Together, these results suggest that maturing neurons in the dorsal hippocampus are especially responsive to testosterone when they are between two and four weeks old. Because the dorsal hippocampus governs spatial learning, the authors note that this regional sensitivity aligns with past behavioral experiments showing that testosterone improves spatial working memory in male rats. The hormone may help preserve new cells during this late window by blocking programmed cell death, boosting supportive growth proteins like brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or aiding the transition of GABA signals as young neurons wire into existing brain circuits.
“We demonstrated that testosterone enhances adult neurogenesis, with the effects being strongest during the later stages of neuronal development,” Spritzer said. “These results suggest that testosterone may be a useful therapeutic target for helping to sustain neuroplasticity, among men in particular.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. First, the experiment was conducted in surgically castrated young adult rats housed in social isolation, which does not mirror the gradual, partial hormone decline experienced by aging men in daily life. Second, the blood and brain tissue were collected 24 hours after the final testosterone injection for the full and late groups, but 16 days after the final injection for the early group. The authors raise the possibility that this gap helps explain why early treatment showed no benefit, but note that this explanation would require new cells to die off at a steady rate throughout development, which earlier research does not support.
“This was preclinical research conducted with rats, so it cannot be extrapolated directly to humans,” Spritzer cautioned. “However, it is suggestive that testosterone may have therapeutic value. Of importance was that we used a high physiological dose of testosterone, and the effects of dose levels have not been considered carefully in past human clinical studies involving testosterone.”
Spritzer also pointed out that boosting cell survival without limit is not necessarily the goal. “One challenge with neurogenesis research is the assumption that more is always better,” he added. “There is likely an optimal level of adult neurogenesis for best brain functioning.”
In addition, the overall statistical analysis did not show that testosterone’s effect differed across the three time windows, so the conclusions about timing rest on separate comparisons within each window, each involving only six to eight rats per group. The study also did not directly measure the molecular pathways inside the cells, so it remains uncertain whether testosterone acted through androgen receptors, estrogen receptors, or downstream growth factors during that 16-to-30-day window. Nor did it test whether the extra neurons translated into better learning or memory. Future research will need to test these specific molecular mechanisms and examine whether similar timing effects apply to older animals or females.
“Now that we know more about the stages of neural development that are influenced by testosterone, assessing the molecular mechanism will be important,” Spritzer said. “Testosterone is metabolized in the brain and likely has many effects on neuronal development, which should be explored.”
The study, “Effects of testosterone upon the survival of new neurons in the dentate gyrus of adult male rats,” was authored by Tatum W. Hamilton, Ezra J. LeMole, Grace K. Nadecki, Jordan M. Gardner, Quinn P. Kennedy, Kathryn A. Blek, and Mark D. Spritzer.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/testosterone-may-help-new-brain-cells-survive-and-timing-could-matter/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Testosterone #BrainHealth #Neuroscience #Neurogenesis #BrainPlasticity #Hippocampus #Memory #MentalHealth #Neurobiology #ScienceNews
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30.Le réveil de la cryogénisation
8 Avril 2300 Chères toutes et chers tous. Comment allez-vous aujourd’hui ? Me concernant, cela fait 4 jours que je trouve dans un hôpital Mercurian et je ne vais pas en sortir avant un petit temps. Malheureusement, le voyage cryogénique n’a pas fonctionné super bien sur moi. La nouvelle est tombée, mon corps a mal encaissé les g. Mais commençons par les bonnes nouvelles. Le voyage s’est globalement bien passé. Nous sommes bien arrivées sur le port spatial de Mercurian. Je […]https://www.elekis.net/2026/10/23/30-le-reveil-de-la-cryogenisation/
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DATE: October 23, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: LSD pushes brain activity toward a more fractal, complex state, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/lsd-pushes-brain-activity-toward-a-more-fractal-complex-state-study-finds/
A new neuroimaging study indicates that lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD, alters human brain activity not just by weakening regular brain waves, but also by speeding them up and making neural signals more complex. The weakening of brain waves and the rise in signal complexity were most pronounced in regions tied to sensory processing, language, emotion, and mental imagery, while areas that control physical movement were largely spared. The findings, published in Communications Biology, also hint that listening to music may dampen rather than amplify these drug-induced changes, though that trend did not hold up after statistical correction.
LSD is a potent psychedelic drug that temporarily alters perception, mood, and the sense of self. Like other classic psychedelics, it works primarily by attaching to and activating serotonin 2A receptors on brain cells, though LSD also binds to dopamine receptors. Studying how this compound changes large-scale brain activity helps scientists understand the biological processes that generate conscious experience.
In human studies, researchers often use magnetoencephalography, or MEG, to track the fast-paced electrical activity of the brain. MEG is a non-invasive procedure where a participant sits with their head inside a helmet-like scanner containing sensitive magnetic detectors. As groups of neurons fire together, they produce tiny magnetic fields that the scanner records at a millisecond-by-millisecond scale.
This electrical activity consists of two main types of signals: rhythmic brain waves and background noise. Rhythmic waves, or neural oscillations, happen when thousands of brain cells fire in a synchronized beat, much like a choir singing a specific note. Two of the most common resting rhythms are alpha waves, which cycle at about 8 to 13 times per second (measured in hertz, or Hz) during relaxed wakefulness, and beta waves, which cycle faster at 15 to 30 Hz and relate to active thinking and alertness. These rhythms ride on top of non-rhythmic, background electrical activity that naturally loses strength at higher frequencies.
Previous psychedelic studies consistently showed that drugs like LSD and psilocybin cause a widespread drop in the strength of alpha and beta waves, a process called cortical desynchronization. Because traditional brain wave analyses measure activity within fixed frequency windows, they can confuse a change in wave speed with a loss of wave strength, or mistake shifts in the background noise for changes in actual rhythms. If an alpha wave speeds up against a background that naturally falls off at higher frequencies, it can look as though the wave lost strength when it actually just shifted to a faster tempo.
Beyond brain wave speed and strength, psychedelics also change the unpredictability and structure of brain signals over time. Scientists measure this using two mathematical tools: Lempel-Ziv complexity, which counts how many new and distinct patterns appear in a signal over time, and Higuchi fractal dimension, which measures how “rough” or self-similar a signal looks when zoomed in and out across different time scales. Higher scores on both metrics indicate richer, less predictable brain activity.
The physical and social environment also plays a major role in shaping a psychedelic experience, with music frequently used in both traditional rituals and modern psychedelic-assisted therapy. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2018 showed that LSD heightened brain responses to music across regions tied to auditory processing, emotion, and memory. The new research was led by first author Venkatesh Subramani, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience, and senior author Karim Jerbi, a full professor in the psychology department, both of the Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Laboratory (CoCo Lab) at the Université de Montréal. The team aimed to separate true changes in brain wave strength from shifts in wave speed and background activity, while also testing how music interacts with these electrical signatures.
“A characteristic effect of classic psychedelics is the desynchronization of rhythmic brain activity (that is, reduced coordination of activity among neural populations) in the alpha (8-13 Hz) and beta (15-30 Hz) bands,” Subramani told PsyPost. “LSD, however, appears somewhat unique because it also speeds up these intrinsic oscillations, by up to 2 Hz for alpha and up to 5 Hz for beta. This acceleration creates an ambiguity: it is unclear whether LSD genuinely desynchronizes these rhythms, or whether the previously reported desynchronization is an artifact of shifts in the spectral peaks.”
To investigate these questions, the researchers analyzed existing MEG data originally collected from 17 healthy volunteers. The experiment used a within-subject, single-blind, placebo-controlled design with a counterbalanced session order, meaning each participant completed two separate scanning sessions spaced 14 days apart without being told which treatment they were receiving. In one session, participants received an intravenous injection of 75 micrograms of LSD, and in the other, they received an inactive saline placebo.
Roughly four hours after the injection, participants underwent MEG brain scans under two different conditions, each lasting seven minutes. In the first condition, they rested with their eyes closed in silence. In the second condition, they kept their eyes closed while listening to ambient music excerpts. The research team used anatomical MRI scans of each participant’s head to map the MEG signals onto 360 distinct regions across the outer surface of the brain.
The authors then used a specialized mathematical tool to separate the rhythmic brain waves from the non-rhythmic background activity in each brain region. Instead of measuring wave strength inside rigid frequency boxes, they tracked the exact peak frequency where each participant’s alpha and beta waves were strongest. They also calculated Lempel-Ziv complexity and Higuchi fractal dimension for each region, and trained machine learning algorithms to see which brain features best distinguished the LSD state from the placebo state.
When the researchers separated the rhythmic waves from the background noise and accounted for shifting frequencies, they found that LSD still caused a genuine drop in the strength of alpha and beta waves. Alpha wave weakening was most pronounced in the temporal lobes, while beta wave weakening occurred broadly across the brain’s surface. However, ignoring the shifting frequencies made the wave weakening look much more widespread than it actually was, confirming that standard methods can inflate the apparent spatial extent of the drug’s effect.
“This study clarifies the ambiguity,” Subramani explained. “It shows that the weakening of oscillations, the usual marker of desynchronization, is genuine even after accounting for the peak shifts, a potential confound.”
Separating the signals also clarified what was happening in the posterior cingulate cortex, a major hub for self-reflection and daydreaming. In standard analyses that mix all signals together, this hub showed large drops in brain wave power under LSD. Once the background noise was removed, those rhythmic differences vanished, indicating that LSD mainly altered the background electrical activity in this region rather than its synchronized waves.
Alongside weakening the waves, LSD systematically sped them up across large portions of the brain. On average, the peak frequency of alpha waves increased by about 2 Hz, while beta wave peaks shifted upward by roughly 5 Hz. Machine learning models trained solely on these frequency shifts were able to correctly identify whether a scan came from an LSD or placebo session with over 82 percent accuracy, where chance would be 50 percent.
The background electrical activity also flattened out across the brain, meaning there was less slow background activity relative to fast activity. At the same time, both Lempel-Ziv complexity and fractal dimension rose substantially, especially in the back of the brain where visual information is processed. Machine learning decoders using these complexity and fractal measures distinguished the LSD state from placebo with over 76 percent accuracy, compared to a 50 percent chance level.
“In plain terms, LSD makes the brain’s main rhythms faster and weaker, and makes its activity more complex,” Subramani noted.
These results align with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which examined brain activity under microdoses using EEG rather than full psychedelic doses using MEG, and similarly found that LSD increases neural signal complexity. The broader shift away from slower rhythms is also in line with a study covered by PsyPost in March 2026, which examined scalp EEG activity following psilocybin rather than source-resolved MEG following LSD and found that the drug weakened slower theta and alpha waves while strengthening faster beta and gamma activity. That study measured the strength of different frequency bands rather than the speed of individual rhythms, however, and the authors of the new paper note that a clear speeding of alpha and beta peaks has not been consistently observed with psilocybin.
To understand how these electrical changes relate to everyday mental functions, the researchers compared their brain maps against a massive database of over 14,000 prior brain imaging studies. They found that LSD’s effects followed distinct functional hierarchies across different brain systems. Reductions in alpha and beta wave strength, background flattening, and complexity increases were strongest in networks tied to vision, hearing, language, emotion, and mental imagery, while the motor cortex, which controls physical movement, remained largely unaffected.
The weakening and speeding of brain waves did not always line up. The functional systems that showed the largest drop in alpha wave strength, such as auditory and language networks, showed only minimal alpha speeding, while motor and attention networks retained relatively more of their alpha strength but showed the largest increases in alpha speed. In the beta range, the pattern reversed, with the biggest speed-ups occurring where beta strength dropped the most. Because the two effects were not statistically linked across the brain, the authors suggest that wave weakening and wave acceleration may reflect separate processes happening at the same time.
When the researchers examined the effect of music, they did not find any results that survived strict statistical corrections for multiple comparisons across the whole brain. However, uncorrected trends pointed in the opposite direction of what the team initially expected. Instead of boosting the brain effects of LSD, listening to music tended to slightly calm them down, resulting in less background flattening and lower signal complexity compared to experiencing LSD in silence.
The authors suggested that music might act as an external attentional anchor. Building on a 2024 analysis of this same dataset that found psychedelic-induced signal complexity was highest with eyes closed and dropped when attention turned outward, they propose that resting in silence allows the mind to wander freely into unconstrained internal states, whereas focusing on an external structured sound may gently ground and stabilize the brain’s electrical activity.
“Music can be very emotionally powerful, and music and psychedelics have been used together in rituals across many cultures,” Subramani said. “We wanted to formally test how music modulates the way LSD affects the brain. We hypothesized that music potentiates the effect of the drug. Somewhat surprisingly, and albeit not statistically robust, we found the opposite trend: music appeared to reduce the drug effect, which could suggest that the stimulus acts as an anchor that keeps subjects from fully experiencing the psychedelic state.”
“As noted in the paper, this is only hypothesis-generating,” he added. “It calls for studies with more subjects and targeted experimental designs with better controls.” He cautioned that “the music result is exploratory and should not be over-interpreted.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these results. The study relied on a relatively small sample of 17 participants, which limits the statistical power needed to detect subtle interactions between the drug and external factors like music. In addition, the MEG scans were recorded about four hours after the LSD injection, roughly two and a half hours after the drug’s subjective effects had peaked. This timing gap may explain why the researchers found few strong links between the brain measurements and participants’ questionnaire ratings.
Looking at music over a single seven-minute average also treats a dynamic song as if it were a static event. Future studies with larger groups could track how brain waves respond to changing musical moments in real time, and use muscle sensors to help rule out muscle activity as a source of the fastest brain signals. Comparing LSD directly with other psychedelics using these same signal-separation methods will also help determine whether speeding up alpha and beta rhythms is a unique signature of LSD’s pharmacology.
The team is already extending their analytical approach to see how these faster brain wave frequencies might affect other common measures of brain communication, such as functional connectivity, which tracks how closely pairs of brain regions coordinate their activity over time.
“This study shows that LSD shifts the oscillatory peaks and that there is a genuine weakening of oscillations beyond these shifts,” Subramani said. “Power is one measure that could be confounded by peak shifts. Another is functional connectivity between pairs of brain regions. We have been actively working on this, and a preprint will be out shortly!”
The study, “LSD reconfigures cortical dynamics through faster brain rhythms and increased fractal dimension,” was authored by Venkatesh Subramani, Timothy Nest, Annalisa Pascarella, Jérémy Brunel, Yorguin José Mantilla Ramos, Yann Harel, Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, Robin Carhart-Harris, Giulia Lioi, Nicolas Farrugia, and Karim Jerbi.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/lsd-pushes-brain-activity-toward-a-more-fractal-complex-state-study-finds/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #LSD #Psychedelics #Neuroscience #BrainScience #BrainActivity #Neuroimaging #Consciousness #MentalHealthResearch #ScientificResearch #MusicAndMind
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#Florida. 🪖#ArmataAmericană a interceptat o aeronavă civilă care a intrat (aparent din greșeală) în spațiul aerian de la #MarALago, în apropierea reședinței lui Donald #Trump. Un avion de vânătoare 🛦#F16 a escortat aeronava civilă, iar aceasta a părăsit zona restricționată fără să îngreuneze operațiunea.