Scientific reportsJul 9, 2025

Immediate effects of psilocybin on eye movement patterns during viewing of visual art

Psychedelic Science Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗OA ↗

Updated Jun 27, 2026

Abstract

Essence

High-dose psilocybin changed how people visually explored paintings without changing their aesthetic ratings.

Evidence

This blinded low-dose versus high-dose eye-tracking study measured gaze fixations, subjective emotional intensity, flow, and ratings during complex visual-stimulus viewing.

Caveat

The abstract does not report sample size, and the findings concern acute semi-naturalistic behavior rather than lasting perceptual or clinical effects.

Simplified

Serotonergic psychedelics are remarkable for their capacity to induce variable yet reproducible modifications to human consciousness. The acute effects of these compounds include perceptual alterations, predominantly in the visual domain, yet these alterations have been mostly documented only by subjective reports. We used eye-tracking to quantify the effects of low vs. high doses of psilocybin mushrooms on eye movements during the exploration of complex visual stimuli under semi-naturalistic conditions, focusing on the case of aesthetic perception. The experimental condition (high vs. low dose) was a priori unknown to participants and experimenters. High doses resulted in a more local visual exploration of paintings, and a less entropic distribution of fixations. While psilocybin altered gaze behavior and increased subjective emotional intensity and feelings of flow, it did not affect the aesthetic ratings of the stimuli, suggesting a dissociation between perceptual and evaluative aspects of aesthetic experience. These findings suggest that psilocybin may influence gaze fixation by altering the perception of low-level visual features, including textures, shapes, and colors. Our work highlights the possibility of investigating psychedelics by addressing their effect on behavior under complex naturalistic conditions, contributing to maintaining subject engagement while also increasing the ecological validity of the findings.

Key numbers

Participants for eye-tracking analysis

Final number of participants after data quality exclusions

146.43

Mean distance between (high dose)

Average distance (in pixels) between consecutive

170.19

Mean distance between (control)

Average distance (in pixels) between consecutive in the control condition

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Immediate effects of psilocybin on eye movement patterns during viewing of visual art

Abstract

Key numbers

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