The short version
- In a placebo-controlled study of 17 volunteers, LSD pushed brain activity toward a more complex, less orderly pattern.
- The team expected ambient music to strengthen that effect, but the trend ran the other way and did not survive statistical correction.
- The lead author calls the music result exploratory and says it should not be over-interpreted.
A team at the Université de Montréal expected music to deepen LSD’s effect on the brain. Their study, published in Communications Biology, did not find that. Seventeen healthy volunteers came in twice, 14 days apart, and received 75 micrograms of LSD or a saline placebo by injection, in counterbalanced order, without being told which. About four hours later, the team recorded their brain activity with magnetoencephalography (MEG) for two 7-minute stretches: eyes closed in silence, and eyes closed while listening to ambient music.
The main result concerned the drug. LSD pushed brain signals toward a more fractal, complex state. The music result was the surprise. “We hypothesized that music potentiates the effect of the drug,” the lead author, Venkatesh Subramani, is quoted by PsyPost. “Somewhat surprisingly, and albeit not statistically robust, we found the opposite trend.” With music on, the drug’s signature was slightly weaker than in silence. The authors suggest music may give attention something outside to hold on to. None of the music effects survived correction across the whole brain.
That is a weak signal from 17 people, one dose and 7 minutes of listening, and Subramani says it “should not be over-interpreted.” We could not read the journal page, which sat behind a login, so this account rests on PsyPost’s report of the paper.
