Cyberdelics: Virtual reality can replicate cognitive effects of psychedelics, new study finds

A new study has found that immersive virtual reality experiences designed to simulate the visual effects of psychedelic substances can produce some of their positive psychological benefits, such as enhanced creative thinking. This was achieved without the use of any drugs, suggesting a potential new avenue for therapeutic tools, according to the research published in the journal Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience.

Scientists have recently renewed their interest in psychedelic substances for their potential to treat a range of mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety. This is because these substances can induce altered states of consciousness that may help break rigid patterns of thought and perception. However, the use of psychedelics comes with challenges, including unpredictable psychological effects, potential physiological risks, and significant legal restrictions in many parts of the world.

In response to these challenges, a team of researchers led by Giulia Brizzi and Chiara Pupillo at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore sought to explore a technological alternative. Their work, part of a project called Cyberdelics, aimed to see if the visual hallucinatory effects of psychedelics could be mimicked using virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The main goal was to investigate whether these simulated experiences, which they call Hallucinatory Visual Virtual Experiences, could have a measurable impact on a person’s cognitive flexibility, emotional state, and physiological activity.

The study involved 50 healthy adult participants in an experiment where each person experienced two different conditions. This type of experimental setup, known as a within-subjects design, allows for a direct comparison of effects because every participant acts as their own control. Before beginning, each person completed a series of baseline assessments to measure their cognitive abilities, emotional state, and bodily responses like heart rate.

Participants were then exposed to two 10-minute videos in an immersive virtual reality headset. The control condition featured a video called “The Secret Garden,” a calming 360-degree journey through a Japanese garden. The experimental condition used the exact same video, but it had been digitally altered using the Google DeepDream algorithm. This algorithm is a form of artificial intelligence that modifies images to create complex, dream-like, and hallucinatory patterns, effectively simulating a psychedelic visual experience. The order in which participants saw the two videos was randomized to prevent the sequence from influencing the results.

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After viewing each video, the participants repeated the same set of assessments they had completed at the beginning. These tests were designed to capture changes in several key areas. To measure cognitive flexibility, the researchers used two main tasks. One was the Alternative Use Task, where participants were asked to generate as many creative uses as possible for common objects, like a brick or a paper clip. The second was the Stroop Color Work Task, which measures a person’s ability to inhibit automatic responses. For instance, a participant might see the word “blue” written in red ink and must say the color of the ink, not the word itself.

The researchers also evaluated emotional and psychological states using standard questionnaires. These surveys assessed levels of anxiety, distress, and both positive and negative feelings. Following each virtual reality session, participants also filled out a scale to describe their sense of “flow,” which relates to how absorbed they felt in the experience and how smoothly it seemed to progress. Finally, physiological changes were tracked by measuring heart rate variability, which provides insight into the activity of the body’s autonomic nervous system, the system that controls automatic functions like heart rate and breathing.

The results of the experiment revealed significant changes in cognitive function after participants were exposed to the simulated hallucinations. In the Alternative Use Task, people generated ideas that were more flexible and conceptually distant from the original object after the hallucinatory video compared to both their baseline performance and their performance after the calm garden video. The researchers used advanced language analysis to confirm that the ideas were not just different but showed greater semantic divergence, suggesting a deeper shift in creative thinking. Participants also performed better on the Stroop task, showing improved inhibitory control after the hallucinatory experience.

The emotional and psychological effects were more complex. Both the calm garden video and the hallucinatory video led to a decrease in anxiety and a reduction in positive feelings when compared to the baseline measurements. This suggests that the immersive virtual reality experience itself had a generally calming and somewhat muted emotional effect. When comparing the two videos directly, the hallucinatory experience was rated as more absorbing. At the same time, participants reported that the experience felt less smooth and effortless, a state known as lower fluency. This may indicate that while the complex visuals captured their attention, they also required more mental effort to process.

In terms of physiological responses, both virtual reality experiences produced a similar calming effect on the body. Participants’ heart rates and the activity of their sympathetic nervous system, which is associated with the “fight or flight” response, decreased after watching both the control video and the hallucinatory video. This finding shows that immersion in a virtual environment can lead to a state of physical relaxation, even when the visual content is stimulating and complex. The combination of mental absorption and physical calm was described by the researchers as a state of “awakened relaxation.”

Professor Giuseppe Riva, who coordinated the research team, explained the significance of the findings. “We have demonstrated for the first time that virtual reality is capable of replicating some of the positive effects typically associated with the use of psychotropic substances,” Riva explained, “among which the increase in cognitive flexibility and creativity is particularly significant. However, it is important to verify whether these effects are truly comparable, on a neurobiological level, to those produced by compounds such as psilocybin or LSD. The data collected, however, suggest that the path taken is promising and deserves further investigation.”

The researchers acknowledge certain limitations of their study. The participants were all young, healthy adults, so it is not yet clear if these results would apply to other age groups or to individuals with clinical conditions like depression or anxiety. Future studies with larger and more diverse groups are needed. Additional research could also incorporate more detailed physiological measures, such as skin conductance, to get a fuller picture of the body’s response.

Including more types of control conditions could help isolate which effects are specific to the hallucinatory simulation versus the virtual reality technology or the video content itself. Future work will explore these questions to better understand how this technology could be refined for potential therapeutic applications.

The study, “Cyberdelics: Virtual reality hallucinations modulate cognitive-affective processes,” was authored by Giulia Brizzi, Chiara Pupillo, Clara Rastelli, Antonino Greco, Luca Bernardelli, Anna Flavia Di Natale, Silvia Francesca Maria Pizzoli, Elena Sajno, Fabio Frisone, Daniele Di Lernia, and Giuseppe Riva.