A final note - the collective progress of our neuroscience community will change human knowledge and mental health in ways you cant imagine. The thrill of publishing this work is tempered by the devastating loss of a brilliant member of our community - nolanrwilliams.com

Bauer and I dreamt this up 5 years ago – I was working on psilocybin fMRI. I was worried because serotonin is vasoactive (hint: it’s IN THEN NAME). Was this impacting psychedelic fMRI? Adam, Jonah, Jordan and team just happened to have the perfect set up to find out the answer.

Why is this a big deal?

fMRI / BOLD-based measures (which rely on blood dynamics) may mis-estimate or mis-interpret psychedelic effects. Some effects attributed to “functional connectivity” might in part be vascular change.

The hemodynamic response to neural activity gets tighter. Which is weird! And honestly not exactly what I expected.
My favorite part is that we saw very similar changes in my human psilocybin fMRI data!

Padawer-Curry and team recorded neuronal and hemodynamic (blood-based) signals simultaneously before and after giving a psychedelic to mice. Surprise: they diverge.

In simple terms: the normal link between neurons firing and local blood flow is distorted.

Congrats! Well deserved.

I agree! We are held accountable by the IRB. But who holds the IRB accountable!?

The advancements in brainstem imaging will make it possible to examine a host of clinically relevent structures like the eriaqueductal gray and substantia nigra in humans, something that has been very hard to do well previously