Communications biologyOct 7, 2026

LSD changes thinking areas by speeding up brain rhythms and increasing complexity

Psychedelic Science Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗OA ↗

Updated Oct 9, 2026

Abstract

LSD induces robust increases in alpha and beta peak frequencies alongside genuine attenuation of oscillatory power.

Cortical desynchronization during LSD is characterized by spatially structured changes in neural oscillations.
Increases in peak frequencies may reflect a genuine alteration in neural dynamics rather than mere confounding effects.
LSD is linked to a flattening of the aperiodic 1/f spectral slope and heightened neural signal complexity.
Effects are particularly pronounced in networks related to sensory processing, language, emotion, and imagery, while the motor cortex remains largely unaffected.
Machine learning analyses identify specific neural metrics that differentiate the psychedelic state induced by LSD from other substances.

Simplified

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) profoundly alters conscious experience, yet the electrophysiological mechanisms by which it reshapes neural dynamics remain incompletely understood. A hallmark of psychedelic states is widespread cortical desynchronization, typically inferred from reductions in spectral power, but whether such effects reflect genuine weakening of neural oscillations or are confounded by shifts in oscillatory peak frequencies remains unresolved. We combine source-resolved magnetoencephalography (MEG), spectral parameterization, temporal complexity metrics, and interpretable machine learning in an LSD versus placebo design, with and without music. We show that LSD induces robust, spatially structured increases in alpha and beta peak frequencies alongside genuine attenuation of oscillatory power, with partly dissociable cortical patterns. Beyond rhythmic activity, LSD is associated with flattening of the aperiodic 1/f spectral slope and increased neural signal fractality and complexity, preferentially affecting sensory, language, emotion, and imagery-related networks while sparing motor cortex. Machine-learning analyses identify peak-frequency shifts, aperiodic parameters, and complexity measures as key discriminators of the psychedelic state. Music does not robustly amplify these neural signatures and instead shows a trend toward attenuation. These findings provide an electrophysiological account of how LSD reorganizes large-scale human brain dynamics and highlight features that may differentiate its neural signature from other psychedelics.