A scientist took a psychedelic drug — and watched his own brain 'fall apart'
NPRA scientist took a psychedelic drug — and watched his own brain 'fall apart' toggle caption Sara Moser/Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis In the name of science, Dr. Nico Dosenbach had scanned his own brain dozens of times. "For the first time, with a really high degree of detail, we're understanding which networks are changing, how intensely they're changing and what persists after the experience," says Dr. Petros Petridis of New York University's Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. The disruptions in brain networks appear to be "where the plasticity effects of psychedelics are coming from," says Dr. Joshua Siegel, a researcher at Washington University and the study's lead author. "You're bringing in single individuals many times," Siegel says, "and that allows you to get a very detailed and precise map of their brain networks."