V-054 | Impact of psilocybin on gaze behavior in short duration visual stimuli

Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Stephanie Müller | Email: stephanieamuller@gmail.com

Stephanie Müller^1°2°3°, Federico Cavanna^1°2°,Laura Alethia de la Fuente^1°2°, Nicolás Bruno^1°2°, Tomas Ariel D’Amelio^1°2°, Carla Pallavicini^1°2°3°, Enzo Tagliazucchi^1°2°4°

^1° Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Física. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
^2° CONICET – Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Física Interdisciplinaria y Aplicada (INFINA). Buenos Aires, Argentina.
^3° Fundación para la Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia (FLENI)
^4° Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Santiago de Chile, Chile

Classical psychedelics are known to induce profound changes in consciousness and cognition. In particular, studies suggest that psychedelics can alter salience and semantic processing. This double-blind, placebo-controlled study investigated the effects of psilocybin on visual perception in short duration stimuli, focusing particularly on its effect on gaze in relation to areas of varying salience. Experiments were conducted with simple stimuli in a natural environment to promote participant comfort, interest and sustained attention. Using an eye-tracking device, gaze fixations were recorded while pictures were displayed on a screen for a short time, with the aim of exploring differences between conditions. Quantitative saliency maps were obtained for each photo and each fixation was mapped to a fixation value. Saliency values were found to be higher for the dose condition. The entropy of the sequence of fixations in areas of high salience was then studied, revealing higher entropy in the dose condition. These results show that psilocybin results in more elaborate visual paths between regions of high stimulus salience.