Human brain mappingApr 9, 2026

Emotional Responses in Experienced Psychedelic Users Measured by Brain Imaging

Psychedelic Science Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗OA ↗

Updated Jun 27, 2026

Abstract

Essence

Repeated naturalistic psychedelic use was linked to distinct behavioral and neural patterns in emotional face processing.

Evidence

A preregistered cross-sectional fMRI study compared 33 experienced psychedelic users with 34 closely matched nonusers during an emotional face task, finding faster and more accurate anger recognition with reduced anger-related limbic and salience-network activation plus other emotion-specific activation differences.

Caveat

Because exposure was naturalistic and cross-sectional with small groups, the study cannot show psychedelics caused the observed emotional-processing differences.

Simplified

Classic psychedelics profoundly alter emotional states, inducing intense acute experiences lasting hours, followed by subtler, longer-lasting changes in emotional reactivity that can persist for weeks. While experimental and clinical studies document these prolonged effects, the highly context-dependent nature of psychedelic experiences leaves open the question of whether naturalistic, nonclinical use similarly modulates emotional processing. To investigate this, we conducted a preregistered, cross-sectional fMRI study comparing experienced psychedelic users (≥ 10 lifetime uses; N = 33) with closely matched nonusers (N = 34). Participants performed an emotional face recognition task, and we examined behavioral performance and neural responses to angry, happy, and fearful facial expressions. Behavioral results revealed that psychedelic users recognized angry expressions more quickly and accurately, indicating enhanced processing efficiency for threat-related stimuli. Consistent with this, whole-brain fMRI analyses showed reduced activation to anger in key limbic and salience network regions. Psychedelic users also exhibited heightened responses to happy expressions in parietal and sensorimotor cortices-aligning with prior clinical observations-as well as increased precuneus activation to fearful expressions. Region-of-interest analyses further demonstrated reduced differentiation between emotional categories in two default mode network nodes: the frontal medial cortex and parahippocampal gyrus. These findings provide a nuanced characterization of neurofunctional changes in emotional processing linked to repeated naturalistic psychedelic use. By bridging clinical and real-world contexts, this work deepens our understanding of the potential long-term consequences of psychedelics and complements existing evidence from controlled therapeutic settings.

Key numbers

1.26 s

Faster Recognition of Angry Faces

Average reaction time for users recognizing angry faces

95.9%

Higher Recognition Accuracy

Overall accuracy for psychedelic users in the classification task

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Emotional Responses in Experienced Psychedelic Users Measured by Brain Imaging

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