Brilman, Toon (2024) Studying Creative Psychedelic Perception through the lens of Pareidolia. Research Project 2 (major thesis), Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences.
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Abstract
Background: Understanding how psilocybin alters visual perception is crucial for understanding its complex effects on human cognition and creativity. While its influence is recognized, specific alterations of creative perception remain unspecified. Our research quantifies psilocybin's effects on visual creative perception through pareidolia, where familiar patterns are perceived in ambiguous stimuli. This reflects divergent perception, akin to divergent thinking in creativity. Objective: Our study aims to quantify perceptual changes induced by psilocybin and train a machine learning model to predict psilocybin influence based on pareidolia characteristics. Design/Methods: In this within-subject study, participants experience both an active condition (3 grams of psilocybin mushroom) and a placebo condition (0.5 grams of active mushroom supplemented with non-active mushroom), spaced one month apart. Participants drew perceived pareidolia on see-through stencils laid over pareidolia-invoking images in four consecutive 5-minute sessions, with verbal descriptions recorded after each session. Descriptions were analyzed using the Alternative Uses Test (AUT) scoring system for originality, fluency, flexibility, and elaboration. Drawings underwent a visuospatial analysis, quantifying size, and distance between drawings. Fractal dimension and contrast level of regions corresponding to pareidolia events were calculated. All characteristics were tested between conditions across all pareidolia using linear mixed models (LMMs) and per pareidolia using (non-)parametric tests. A Random Forest classifier was trained using these features to predict psilocybin influence. Results: Psilocybin selectively enhanced elaboration without significantly impacting other creativity domains across pareidolia images. A trend towards larger average size was found across pareidolia, but only reached significance in Pareidolia 3. Significant differences were found in average fractal dimension and contrast in Pareidolia 1, indicating stimulus-dependent effects. The Random Forest classifier demonstrated robust predictive power, with an AUC of around 0.8 in 3 out of 4 pareidolia images. Conclusion: Psilocybin significantly influences elaboration of perceived pareidolia, suggesting increased richness of visual perception, without changing other creativity domains, showing a selective effect on creative perception. Significant differences in pareidoliaspecific tests indicate complex stimulus-dependent effects of psilocybin. Despite subtle effects, the Random Forest classifier effectively classified psilocybin influence, highlighting the potential of computational methods in studying altered states of consciousness.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Research Project 2 (major thesis)) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Scheurink, A.J.W. |
| Degree programme: | Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences |
| Thesis type: | Research Project 2 (major thesis) |
| Language: | English |
| Date Deposited: | 04 Dec 2024 08:13 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Dec 2024 08:13 |
| URI: | https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/34473 |
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