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  4. THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS: A MULTIMODAL NEUROIMAGING AND COMPUTATIONAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTS OF PSYCHEDELIC TRYPTAMINES AND MDMA ON HUMAN BRAIN DYNAMICS

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS: A MULTIMODAL NEUROIMAGING AND COMPUTATIONAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTS OF PSYCHEDELIC TRYPTAMINES AND MDMA ON HUMAN BRAIN DYNAMICS

File(s)
Singleton_cornellgrad_0058F_13535.pdf (18.36 MB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://doi.org/10.7298/99m6-4878
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/114146
Collections
Cornell Theses and Dissertations
Author
Singleton, Stephen
Abstract

Psychedelic and entactogenic drugs, once prohibited, are now being decriminalized at the local level and are poised to soon be regulated as medicines by the FDA. With nearly 100 pharmaceutical and biotech companies developing novel therapeutics from these compounds, it is essential to understand their mechanisms and impacts on the human brain. In this dissertation, we first explore the acute effects of psychedelic drugs on human brain dynamics using a computational framework called network control theory. We reveal that LSD and psilocybin decrease the barriers required for state-transitions in the brain, and this effect covaries with more dynamic brain activity. Incorporating anatomical receptor densities, we find that the serotonin 2a receptor is optimally positioned throughout the brain to facilitate this effect. We then show that time-resolved network control analysis can accurately map and simulate the rapidly-evolving dynamics of DMT, a powerful but short-acting psychedelic. Finally, we investigate brain changes associated with MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. We find that MDMA-assisted therapy alters brain response to traumatic memories, highlighting several regions of interest in the salience and default mode networks. Overall, this work provides a framework for understanding the acute impacts of psychedelic drugs on human brain dynamics and could potentially be used to harness or predict these effects for future clinical applications.

Date Issued
2023-05
Keywords
computational neuroscience
•
fMRI
•
MDMA
•
network control theory
•
psychedelics
Committee Chair
Kuceyeski, Amy
Committee Member
Sabuncu, Mert
Gonzalez Caraballo, Marlen
Degree Discipline
Computational Biology
Degree Name
Ph. D., Computational Biology
Degree Level
Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Rights URI
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Type
dissertation or thesis
Link(s) to Catalog Record
https://newcatalog.library.cornell.edu/catalog/16176546

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