A novel method for quantitative analysis of subjective experience reports: application to psychedelic visual...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychopharmacology

Background:

• Psychedelic compounds like LSD and psilocybin are known to alter visual perception.
• The specific variations in visual effects across different psychedelic substances remain largely unquantified.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the consistency and variation of visual effects across a wide range of psychedelic substances.
• To quantitatively analyze qualitative self-reported visual experiences associated with psychoactive substances.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a large dataset of self-report texts from Erowid, analyzing 103 psychoactive substances.
• Employed OpenAI's embedding model to represent text data and trained a classifier to identify visual effect descriptions.
• Compared visual effect reporting across 30 psychedelic and 73 non-psychedelic substances.

Main Results:

• Found significant and consistent variations in the proportion of visual effect descriptions across different substances, including within the psychedelic category.
• Identified significant and consistent variations in the types of visual effects (e.g., color, pattern, movement) reported for different psychedelics.
• Demonstrated reliable differences in how psychedelic substances impact vision and the qualitative nature of these visual alterations.

Conclusions:

• Psychedelic substances exhibit distinct and reliable patterns of visual effects.
• The qualitative nature of visual perception changes varies significantly between different psychedelic compounds.
• This study provides quantitative evidence for the nuanced impact of psychedelics on visual experience.