Abstract
It has been proposed that psychedelics induce profound functional changes to the hierarchical
organisation of the human brain. Yet the term hierarchy is currently not well-defined in neuroscience.
Here, we use a precise definition of hierarchy, grounded in the theory of thermodynamics , which
allows the quantification of temporal asymmetry in the directionality of information flow . We
quantified the changes to the directed functional hierarchy of the brain under three classical
serotonergic psychedelics β psilocybin, LSD and DMT. We found that all three psychedelics induce
a reduction of the directed functional hierarchy, such that they display lower levels of global and
network temporal asymmetry and a contraction of the two main patterns of variation of temporal
asymmetry. Crucially, our results imply that the brain's directed fu nctional hierarchy is collapsed
under psychedelics, interpreted as yielding a more flexible brain. This enhanced flexibility in brain
organisation under psychedelics may underpin the altered cognition and behaviour observed during
these states, and, possibly afterwards, be suggestive of therapeutic potential.
Introduction
Psychedelic intervention has garnered substantial attention in recent years for its ability to induce
profound functional reorganisation within the human brain, both in the acute and long -term phases
of its effects1. Understanding these changes is important not only for a comprehensive grasp of the
underlying neurobiology but also for discovering the mechanisms underlying potential therapeutic
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applications2-4. The traditional approach address ing this question has focused on the functional
interactions between brain regions and has investigated whether the psychedelic experience induces
changes in the functional hierarchy 5-9. Here, we tackle this question by investigating the brainβs
hierarchical organisation under psychedelics using thermodynamics principles to quantify the
temporal asymmetry in information flow , and thus defining brainβs temporal hierarchical
organisation.
The main hypothesis is that psychedelic interventions desynchronise the brain 1 and change the
organisation of the brain by shifting the functional hierarchy , where unimodal regions, related to
sensory cortices, become less constrained from the transmodal higher -level cognitive cortices,
leading to novel perceptual experiences 10. In that direction, r ecent evidence has shown that the
principal gradient representing such functional organisation is compressed under psilocybin, LSD
and DMT 5,9. Furthermore, directed functional hierarchy , derived from harmonic decomposition of
functional interactions, has been shown to collapse under DMT -induced brain state 8. Nevertheless,
the term βhierarchyβ is currently not well defined in neuroscience and several definitions coexist in
the literature 11. Here we used a concrete definition of hierarchy of a system, namely directed
functional hierarchy , that quantifies the temporal asymmetry in the directionality of information
flow12. Importantly, this definition is theoretically grounded in thermodynamics which defines
βbreaking the detailed balanceβ as a direct measure of asymmetry for any physical system and
determines the level of non-equilibrium12-15.
Recent work ha s directly quantif ied temporal hierarchical organisation from spatiotemporal
whole-brain data by measuring hierarchy through the level of irreversibility of brain signal. Indeed,
such definition of hierarchy has revealed differential ways of how psilocybin and escitalopram (an
antidepressant drug) work in rebalancing brain dynamics in depression 16, as well as, has implicated
the importance of reorganisation of fronto -striatal-thalamic circuitry in long -term effects of
psilocybin17. Furthermore, higher levels of asymmetrical information flow have been observed during
cognitive tasks implying a hierarchical organisation needed for the specific computations 13,18,19.
Conversely, a lower level of irreversibility has been observed in disorder of consciousness human
patients and anesthetized non-human primates suggesting constrained computational capabilities13,20.
The main idea here is to capture the asymmetry in the temporal processes by comparing time -
shifted correlation matrices of neuroimaging data and to examine how this reflects changes to the
directed functional hierarchy in the brain under psychedelics. To this end, we leverage previous ly
published dataset of resting -state functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) data from healthy human
participants under the effects of three classical serotonergic psychedelics, namely psilocybin21 (N=9),
LSD22 (N=15) and DMT 9 (N=17), in the acute post -intervention stage. Crucially, we compute the
global and network level s of temporal asymmetry characterizing which aspects of the brainβs
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distributed functional organisation are consistently involved in psychedelic effects despite the
different drugs. We also investigate how the temporal asymmetry hierarchical reconfiguration
changes across different spatial scales by changing the graining of the parcellation ranging from 100
to 1000 brain regions in the Schaefer parcellations23. Finally, we compute the functional gradients on
the temporal asymmetry matrices to directly quantify the functional organisation of directed
functional hierarchy in terms of uni-and transmodal modes.
Overall, the results suggest that acute effects of psychedelics induce a flattening of the hierarchical
functional organisation, showing lower levels of global and networks temporal asymmetry than
resting-state controls participants. Importantly, considering that one defining feature of non -
equilibrium behaviour in living organisms is their dependence on the spatial scale 24, i.e., few
available macroscopic observables may be the result of averaging over non -equilibrium degrees of
freedom, we investigate whether the temporal asymmetry in brain dynamics is intrinsically related
with the spatial scale in which the brain signals are considered. We found that coarse -grained
parcellations are not optimal for describing the psychedelic effects in terms of temporal asymmetry
hierarchy reconfiguration, while parcellations from 300 regions and above seems to capture the
reconfiguration. The time functional gradients analysis also shows a collapse of the first two
components during psychedelic effects mainly in visual and somatomotor areas aligned with previous
findings5,9. As such, the results demonstrate th at temporal asymmetry encodes relevant features of
whole-brain functional organisation during acute psychedelics effects, providing evidence that
hierarchy is flattened making brain organisation more accessible and adaptable in support of
increased flexibility.
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Results
Overview
In order to fully appreciate the functional changes under psychedelics , new advanced methods are
needed. O ur goal here is to propose a more principled measure of directed functional hierarchy
inspired by tools from the theory of thermodynamics. We defined directed functional hierarchy as the
amount of asymmetry in the brain. To do so, we quantified temporal asymmetry, in terms of time -
shifted correlations, to capture the breaking of the detailed balance. Then, w e computed the
magnitude of temporal asymmetry for three different psychedelic-induced brain states β DMT, LSD
and Psilocybin ( Figure 1A ). We measured the global decrea se of the magnitude of temporal
asymmetry by computing the Fano factor over the distribution of pairwise values of the magnitude
of temporal asymmetry between various regions (Figure 1B). Then, we applied the same measure of
temporal asymmetry in terms of resting -state networks calculating within and between network
magnitude of temporal asymmetry (Figure 1C). Finally, we explored the functional organisation of
temporal asymmetry for the two principal gradients of the magnitude of temporal asymmetry matrix
(Figure 1D).
Figure 1. Calculation of Brain Directed functional hierarchy in Psychedelic State. A) Neuroimaging fMRI data of
whole-brain dynamics before and during the intervention with psychedelic compounds β psilocybin (n=9), LSD (n=15)
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and DMT (n=17) (see Methods). The pairwise temporal asymmetry is measured as a time -shifted correlation between
brain regions of interest x and y with a time shift of 1 TR. At the whole-brain level the temporal asymmetry is summarized
in an asymmetric matrix represented by the Time Shifted Correlation matrix. The Magnitude of temporal asymmetry is
defined as the square of the difference between time-shifted correlations of regions x and y, and time-shifted correlations
of regions y and x. The working hypothesis is that directed functional hierarchy in the psychedelic-induced state decreases
compared to the pre-intervention state. B) Global temporal asymmetry, calculated as the Fano Factor of the distribution
of regional magnitudes of temporal asymmetry. The influence of coarse graining on the Global temporal asymmetry was
performed for different spatial scales defined by the multiscale Schaefer parcellation β 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 and 1000
brain regions. C) temporal asymmetry in resting-state networks (RSNs), calculated as the Fano Factor of the distribution
of regional magnitudes of temporal asymmetry within and between given resting -state networks. D) Functional
organisation of temporal asymmetry was derived for the two principal components of the magnitude of temporal
asymmetry matrix explaining equal variance of the data for the three psychedelic datasets.
Global temporal hierarchical brain organisation is flattened during psychedelics states
We investigated how the directed functional hierarchy is reorganised during psychedelics state based
on thermodynamics definition to capture the directionality of temporal information flow. We
computed the temporal asymmetry from the fMRI time series extracted from different psychedelic
drugs and the corresponding placebo condition (Figure 2) . In brief, our measures of temporal
asymmetry are based on the shifted functional connectivity matrix, computed as the pairwise
Pearsonβs correlation of the time series with a temporal shift between pairs of signals. In that way,
we obtained an asymmetrical matrix that contains how the signal j in time π‘ + βπ‘ is affected by the
signal i in time t in the entry ij, and the vice versa in the entry ji (see Methods). We then define the
temporal asymmetry matrix as the absolute value of the difference between the shifted correlation
matrix and its transpose (a symmetric square matrix). We quantified the global level of the magnitude
of temporal asymmetry by computing the Fano factor, i.e., the ratio between the mean and the
standard deviation across all entries of these matri ces, for each participant in each condition and
dataset. We found that the global magnitude of temporal asymmetry significantly decreases under the
effects caused by different psychedelic drugs (DMT (DMT post vs. DMT pre, p<1x10 -4, DMT post
vs. PCB post, p<1x10-4, PCB post vs. PCB pre, p=0.419), LSD (LSD post vs. LSD pre, p=3x10-4) and
psilocybin (PSILO post vs. PSILO pre, p =0.022, PSILO post vs. PCB post, p=0.057, PCB post vs.
PCB pre, p=0.79)) compared with the temporal asymmetry before dose administration or with placebo
effects (Figure 2A). These results were obtained using a fine-grained parcellation consisted of 1000
cortical brain regions 23. Based on these changes, we can interpret that the directed functional
hierarchy is flattened during the psychedelic state.
Considering that the temporal asymmetry of a system is dependent on the spatial scale, we also
investigated the effect of the spatial graining by means of different size cortical parcellation o n the
hierarchical reorganisation during psychedelic state. To do so, we exhaustively computed the
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temporal asymmetry for six different brain parcellations ranging from 100 to 1000 regions as defined
by Schaefer and colleagues 23. In Figure 2B we show how the difference between the temporal
asymmetry before and after psychedelic states increases with finer parcellations, while the statistical
comparison becomes more significant, as measured by the reduction of the p-value of a paired t-test.
Importantly, we noticed that for the three drugs differences between pre and post dose administration
are significant in all the cases for parcellation resolutions of more than 300 brain regions. For the
DMT and LSD drugs the results are significant across all parcellation resolutions.
Figure 2. Global reconfiguration of directed functional hierarchy during psychedelic effects. A) We computed t he
magnitude of temporal asymmetry for each condition in the three psychedelic datasets for Schaefer 1000 parcellation.
We found that post psychedelic administration condition (pink violin plots) the temporal asymmetry is significantly lower
compared with the placebo condition (PCB) pre and post injection , and compared with the before drug administration
(blue violin plots) (two-tailed paired t-test, DMT dataset: DMT post vs. DMT pre, p<10-4, DMT post vs. PCB post, p<10-
4, PCB post vs. PCB pre, p=0.419., LSD dataset: LSD post vs. LSD pre, p=3x10-4, PSILOCYBIN dataset: PSILO post vs.
PSILO pre, p=0.022, PSILO post vs. PCB post, p =0.057, PCB post vs. PCB pre, p=0.79, * p<0.05, *** p<0.001). B)
We found that the differences between before and after doses administration increases with the resolution of the
parcellation while becomes more significant in terms of the reduction of the p-value (two-tailed paired t-test).
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Functional system temporal asymmetry is reconfigured during psychedelics states
Following our results at the global level, we focused here on the changes that temporal asymmetry
undergoes at the functional system level, as it is believed to reflect the role that different networks
play in temporal hierarchical reconfiguration. We computed the temporal asymmetry for each of the
functional resting state networks (RSN), namely the Yeo 7 RSN 25, for each participant with each
psychedelic drug and for the placebo condition (PCB) before and after administration. The within
RSN temporal asymmetry was computed by averaging weights within a network, and between RSN
temporal asymmetry was computed by averaging weights between two networks. First, we
investigated how the temporal asymmetry is modified within each RSN across conditions ( Figure
3A). We found that the default mode network (DMN), frontoparietal network (FPA), and dorsal
attention network (D AN) significantly , and consistently for the three psychedelics, reduce the
magnitude of temporal asymmetry (DMT: DMT post vs. DMT pre; VIS - p<10-4, SMT - p<10-4, DAN
β p=0.014. VAN - p=0.035. LBC p=0.809, FPA - p<10-4, DMN - p=0.0052, PCB post vs. PCB pre;
n.s., LSD: LSD post vs. LSD pre; VIS - p<10-4, SMT β p=0.054, DAN - p=0.014. VAN - p=0.015.
LBC p=0.184, FPA β p=0.036, DMN β p=0.002, PSILO: PSILO post vs. PSILO pre; VIS β p=0.335,
SMT β p=0.474, DAN β p=0.012. VAN β p=0.851. LBC p=0.448, FPA β p=0.015, DMN β p=0.006,
PCB post vs. PCB pre; n.s ). Secondly, we assessed the reconfiguration of temporal asymmetrical
interactions between RSNs during the psychedelic state induced by different drugs. In Figure 3B, we
display the interaction matrices before and after dose administration (DMT and psilocybin) and after
dose administration and placebo condition (DMT, LSD, and psilocybin). We found that interactions
involving the DMN and FPA networks are significantly altered during the psychedelic state compared
with the PCB condition and before dose administration (Table S1). Importantly, for the DMT and
psilocybin dataset, in which we have the control PCB experiment , we noticed almost no significant
differences when comparing before and after PCB administration, supporting the hypothesis that
psychedelic drugs are responsible for reshaping temporal asymmetry interactions.
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Figure 3. Functional system temporal asymmetry is reconfigured during psychedelics states . We computed the
magnitude of temporal asymmetry for each functional system, namely the Yeo 7 resting state networks, and for each
condition in the three datasets. A) We investigated how the magnitude of temporal asymmetry of each RSN is altered
during psychedelic state compared with the PCB condition and before the doses administration. We found that DMN,
FPA and DAN significantly decrease the magnitude of temporal asymmetry during psychedelic states (two-tailed paired
t-test, DMT: DMT post vs. DMT pre; VIS - p<10-4, SMT - p<10-4 , DAN β p=0.014. VAN - p=0.035. LBC p=0.809, FPA
- p<10-4, DMN - p=0.0052, PCB post vs. PCB pre; n.s., LSD: LSD post vs. LSD pre; VIS - p<10-4, SMT β p=0.054, DAN
- p=0.014. VAN - p=0.015. LBC p=0.184, FPA β p=0.036, DMN β p=0.002, PSILO: PSILO post vs. PSILO pre; VIS β
p=0.335, SMT β p=0.474, DAN β p=0.012. VAN β p=0.851. LBC p=0.448, FPA β p=0.015, DMN β p=0.006, PCB post
vs. PCB pre; n.s.. In the figure we report fdr corrected p-values (* p<0.05 corrected). B) We show how the magnitude of
temporal asymmetrical interactions between RSN are modified during the psychedelic state. We show the interaction
matrices for each dataset and for each condition averaged across participants (first column) and then we assessed the
statistical differences between conditions in term of paired t-test false discovery rate corrected (white entries) and without
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correction (grey entries) (rightmost column) (see Table S1 ). (DMN: default mode; FPA: frontoparietal; LBC: limbic;
VAN: ventral attentional; DAN: dorsal attentional; SMT: somatomotor; VIS: visual networks).
Functional gradients organisation of temporal asymmetry is reshaped during psychedelics
A second complementary perspective pertains to the brainβs functional gradients organisation on how
the temporal hierarchy is altered during the effects of psychedelics. Typically, functional gradients
are constructed using principal component analysis or similar nonlinear methods (Diffusion Map
Embeddings, Laplacian Eigenmodes, among others 26) to extract the gradients from functional data.
These methods provide a low -dimensional representation of the data by computing the most
significant patterns of variation of functional connectivity (FC) in the form of gradients. Specifically,
the first functional gradient captures the greatest variation in the functional connectivity
organisation27. In previous studies, functional gradients were examined during the acute phase
following psychedelic administration, revealing a collapse of the first gradient during DMT state
measured as the difference between the minimum and maximum range of the functional data
projected in that first gradient9. Here, we hypothesize that the functional organisation of the temporal
asymmetry will also be reshaped during the effects of psychedelics, showing differences in the range
of the projections o f the temporal asymmetry on the gradients . While, traditionally, the number of
gradients is selected by choice, often focusing on the first gradient because of its primary importance
in terms of explaining most of the variance in the data, here we chose the number of gradients that
have given us the same variance explained across each dataset.
Therefore, for each dataset, we obtained the first two gradients of temporal asymmetry, as w e
found that this is the minimum number of gradients showing not significant differences in the
explained variance ( Figure S1 and S2 ). Consequently, for the rest of the gradient analysis, we
considered the first two gradients to assess how functional organisation of the temporal asymmetry
is reshaped under psychedelics. Figure 4A shows the spatial distribution of the first two temporal
asymmetry gradients for the three different psychedelics drugs in Schaefer 400 parcellations using
PCA methods implemented in the BrainSpace Toolbox26. We also show the associations of gradients
loading to each RSN for each condition in each dataset for the first two gradients. We noticed that,
consistently for the three datasets, the first gradient separates the somatomotor network with default
mode and frontoparietal networks, and the second gradient separates the visual with higher -order
networks. At individual level, we investigated the gradient contraction in the two-dimensional space
determined by the first two gradients. We projected the loading o f each brain region in this two -
dimensional space for each drug pre and post administration (DMT, LSD and PSILOCYBIN) and
pre and post PCB doses (DMT and PSILOCYBIN) and we quantified the gradient contraction by
computing the surface that loading projections are spanning in each case. We found that these gradient
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surfaces are lower during psychedelic state (two-tailed paired t -test, DMT dataset: DMT post vs.
DMT pre, p=3x10-4, DMT post vs. PCB post, p=5x10-4, PCB post vs. PCB pre, p=0.594, LSD dataset:
LSD post vs. LSD pre, p=0.007, PSILOCYBIN dataset: PSILO post vs. PSILO pre, p=0.026, PSILO
post vs. PCB post, p=0.883, PCB post vs. PCB pre, p=0.357) , showing that psychedelics induce a
two-dimensional gradient contraction of the temporal asymmetry functional organisation (Figure
4B).
Figure 4. Functional gradients organisation of temporal asymmetry is reconfigured under psychedelic state. A) We
obtain the first two functional gradients of the magnitude of temporal asymmetry for the three datasets before and after
the doses administration (DMT, LSD and PSILOCYBIN), and before and after the PCB intervention (DMT and
PSILOCYBIN). The timeseries for this analysis were extracted in Schaefer 400 parcellation, which is the minimum
resolution showing significantly results in reshaping the temporal hierarchy during psychedelics (see Figure 2). In the
three cases the spatial distribution of both gradients is similar for the three drugs. We found that the amount of variance
explained is not significant ly different for the three datasets pre and post drug , and PCB administration when the first
two gradients are considered (see Figure S1). We related the gradients loading, i.e., the projection of each brain region
into the gradients, with each RSN for each condition in each dataset for the first two gradients. Consistently for the three
datasets, the first gradient separates the somatomotor network with default mode and frontoparietal networks, and the
second gradient sep arates the visual with higher -order networks. B) We quantified the reshaping of the functional
organisation of the temporal asymmetry by computing the surface spanned by the projections of the loadings in the two-
dimensional space generated by the first two gradients. We found a gradient surface contraction during psychedelic states
(two-tailed paired t-test, DMT dataset: DMT post vs. DMT pre, p=3x10 -4, DMT post vs. PCB post, p=5x10 -4, PCB post
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vs. PCB pre, p=0.594, LSD dataset: LSD post vs. LSD pre, p=0.007, PSILOCYBIN dataset: PSILO post vs. PSILO pre,
p=0.026, PSILO post vs. PCB post, p=0.883, PCB post vs. PCB pre, p=0.357, * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001).
Regional level reshaping of functional organisation of directed functional hierarchy under
psychedelics
Since psychedelic drugs induce a surface contraction in the two -dimensional space defined by the
first two functional gradients of temporal asymmetry, we asked whether this contraction could be
evaluated at the regional level in that space. To do so, we projected the loadings of each region in the
space given by the first two functional gradients of temporal asymmetry pre/post drug administrations
(DMT, LSD and PSILOCYBIN) and pre/post-PCB administration (DMT and PSILOCYBIN) . In
Figure 5A, we show the projections of the 400 brain regions for each case, labelled with different
colours corresponding to regions in Yeo7 RSNs.We then tracked each region in that space during the
reshaping of the gradients between pre/post drug and pre/post-PCB administration (Figure 5B). We
identified each region with a trajectory in two -dimensional space moving from cyan dots (pre) to
magenta dots (post psychedelic) and to blue dots (post placebo), allowing us to quantify this reshaping
in terms of distances in that space. We measured the reshaping of the gradients by quantifying the
distance of the trajectory of each region in the pre and post conditions for the DMT and PSILO
datasets (Figure 5C). We found that the distances are significantly higher for both DMT and PSILO
datasets (DMT: p=0.028, PSILO: p=0.019). It is to be noted that for LSD we could not compute this
due to the missing placebo condition. Finally, we rendered into brain surfaces the distance that each
brain region travels between the psychedelic and non -psychedelic state and for the PCB condition
(Figure 5D). Crucially, somatomotor and visual areas seem to be involved in the reshaping of the
gradients at the regional level as well as regions of the default mode network.
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Figure 5. Regional level reshaping of the functional organisation of temporal asymmetry during psychedelic state. A)
We project each brain region (each dot in the plots) on the two firsts functional gradients of the magnitude of temporal
asymmetry for the three datasets pre/post doses administration (DMT, LSD and PSILO) and pre/post the PCB
intervention (DMT and PSILO) . The color code is relating each brain region to the corresponding RSN. B) We are
representing the trajectories of each brain region when the functional organisation of the magnitude of temporal
asymmetry is reshaped during psychedelics. The origin of trajectories is the cyan dot, representing pre (or control
condition) while the state post intervention is represented by magenta dots for psychedelic and by blue dots for placebo
interventions. C) We quantified the contraction of the two -dimensional gradient space through measuring the distance
of each trajectory. We show compared across participants the distances travelled for each region between pre/post DMT
and psilocybin with the corresponding pre/post PCB and we found that for DMT and PSILO groups the distances travelled
are higher than PCB groups (DMT: p=0.028, PSILO: p=0.019, * p<0.05). We did not perform this comparison for LSD
as it does not have the placebo condition and therefore, we only report the distance for pre/post LSD . D) We render
brain surfaces with the distance that each brain region travels averaged across participants between the psychedelic and
non-psychedelic state and for the PCB conditions in DMT and PSILO.
Discussion
Overall, our findings suggest that the acute effects of psychedelics lead to a collapse of the functional
organisation of the temporal hierarchy, with lower levels of global and network temporal asymmetry
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compared to resting-state controls. We also demonstrate that spatial graining by means of different
whole-brain parcellation resolutions impacts the estimation of temporal asymmetry information flow
reconfiguration during psychedelic states. The analysis of temporal functional gradients also indicates
a collapse of the first two components during psychedelic effects, primarily in visual and
somatomotor areas. Crucially, our analysis assess es how each brain region is moving in two -
dimensional space determined by the first two functional gradients, sho wing longer trajectories
comparing pre- and post-psychedelics with pre- and post-PCB conditions. These results demonstrate
that temporal asymmetry encodes significant features of whole-brain functional organisation during
acute psychedelic effects, providing evidence that the directed functional hierarchy is flattened,
enabling a more flexible and accessible brain organisation.
Currently, within neuroscience the notion of hierarchy is not well defined12. This is partly because
current scientific fields and methodologies target different aspects of brain organisation11. In this
paper we applied a precise definition of hierarchy of a system, namely directed functional hierarchy,
that computes the level of temporal asymmetry in the directionality of information flow. This
description stems from thermodynamics which posits that the βbreaking of the detailed balanceβ
serves as a direct measure of asymmetry for any physical system. Asymmetry in processing is crucial
for computation in recurrent neural networks (RNNs) such as the human brain because it allows for
directed information flow, dynamic feedback, and the emergence of complex temporal behaviours.
Asymmetrically connected neuronal populations enable the network to maintain and evolve internal
states over time, a key requirement for tasks involving memory and sequence p rediction, and, more
generally, computation28. In contrast, symmetric or bidirectional connections often cancel out these
dynamic effects, limiting the network's ability to compute complex temporal patterns effectively29-32.
Such definition of hierarchy based on asymmetry differs from previously used approaches that
expressed the flattening of functional hierarchies in terms of compression of the principal cortical
gradient as derived from static functional connectivity 5,9. Intuitively, this can be understood by
appreciating that the magnitude of temporal asymmetry matrix encodes the amount of directionality
of information flow which is not the case in traditional approaches using static functional
connectivity.
In the brain, psychedelic action results in enhanced richness of spatiotemporal dynamics. This has
been supported by a broadening of the functional states repertoire and increases in temporal
complexity while the functional network of the brain reflects a more integrated state with the
suppression of individual resting -state networks 33-35. This corroborates t heoretical and empirical
works positing that psychedelics collapse the brainβs functional hierarchies, and, in effect βflatten the
landscapeβ of brain dynamics 10,36,37. By escaping deep local minima under psychedelics, the brain
practically fosters flexible and adaptative patterns of thought and behaviour. Here, the lower levels
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of global and network temporal asymmetry compared to resting-state control participants align with
these findings. This is further supported by the gradients analysis showing the contraction of the first
two components during psychedelic effects mainly in visual and somatomotor areas. Importantly, our
Results
are highly consistent across three different psychedelic drugs, namely DMT, LSD and
psilocybin.
In the context of thermodynamics of living systems, it is well-known that systems need to operate
far from thermodynamic equilibrium to perform most of the important biological functions for living.
Langtonβs seminal work showed that maximal computational capability emerges in dynamical
systems poised at the βedge of chaos,β a regime between order and randomness where complex,
structured patterns and universal computation can arise 38. This insight established a link between
criticality and information processing, suggesting that non -equilibrium conditions are integral to
meaningful computation. More recently, Englandβs theoretical advances demonstrated that life-like
behavior and adaptive organization can naturally emerge as dissipative structures under sustained
energy flow39,40. By framing biological systems as inherently far -from-equilibrium entities capable
of βcomputingβ probabilistic inferences about their environment, this perspective aligns with the
notion that non -equilibrium conditions are not only conducive to complexit y but essential for
sustaining processes that both generate and utilize information in a functionally meaningful way.
Landauerβs principle further provides a thermodynamic foundation for this relationship, explicitly
linking information processing to energ y dissipation and entropy production 41. This connection
extends to Fristonβs free energy principle 42, which conceptualizes biological systems as
nonequilibrium steady -state engines that minimize variational free energy βa statistical and
information-theoretic quantity βwhile continuously dissipating energy to maintain organized,
inference-driven states. Toge ther, these lines of inquiry unify thermodynamics, information
processing, and adaptive computation under the umbrella of nonequilibrium physics.
At microscopic scales, for instance, enzymatic activity can induce broken detailed balance at the
molecular scale driving the system out of equilibrium43. At the same time these microscopic
mechanisms can drive the system out of equilibrium by breaking the detailed balance at the
mesoscopic scales44. Nevertheless, the nonequilibrium nature of a system is intrinsically dependent
on the spatiotemporal graining, and whether the non-equilibrium dynamics is preserved from a finer
to a coarser graining is an open question45. The same questions have been posed in brain dynamics ,
and, while, in general, it is agreed that at the neuronal scale the processes are out-of-equilibrium, it is
less clear for macroscopic brain dynamics. Recent studies have investigated, using different
methodologies, how whole-brain macroscopic dynamics breaks the detailed balance to hold cognitive
functions15,46 and how the level of non-equilibrium is related with state consciousness13,14,47 and their
alterations during disease 20. Similarly, recent research has demonstrated that psilocybin and
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escitalopram work in different ways for rebalancing brain dynamics in depression , supporting the
hypothesis that neuropsychiatric disorders could be closely linked to the breakdown in regions
orchestrating brain dynamics from the top of the hierarchy 16. Here, we investigate d the directed
functional hierarchy reshaping during psychedelic states based on temporal asymmetry (as a signature
of deviation from the equilibrium ) and its dependence on the spatial scaling of the system. We
addressed this question by exploring different parcellation resolutions . We discovered that coarse -
grained parcellations are not optimal for describing the psychedelic effects in terms of temporal
asymmetry hierarchy reconfiguration, while parcellations of 300 regions or more seem to capture the
reconfiguration effectively.
The breakdown of irreversibility and time-asymmetry under psychedelics can also be interpreted
from the point of view of computation and interference with the brainβs βmodelling engineβ 48-50.
Systems performing computations must operate out of equilibrium, as computation inherently
involves information processing, state changes, and energy dissipation. Landauerβs Principle
demonstrates that erasing information incurs a thermodynamic cost, linking computation to entropy
generation and irreversibility 41. Living systems, guided by non -equilibrium thermodynamics,
continuously consume energy to maintain ordered structures and perform computations such as gene
regulation and neural signaling 51. Similarly, artificial computational systems, including classical and
reversible computers, dissipate energy as they transition between states, further emphasizing that
computation is fundamentally a non-equilibrium process52.
Importantly, our work aims to investigate the temporal asymmetry obtained through the time -
shifted correlation, which is often used as a straightforward signature of deviation from equilibrium53.
Equally, there are different approaches for capturing the breaking of the detailed balance and temporal
asymmetry that can be used to investigate the reshaping of the directed functional hierarchy during
psychedelics. For instance, Granger Causality or Mutual Information could be considered to quantify
the time directionality of the information flow between brain signals 54,55 Also different approaches
capturing the non -equilibrium nature of whole -brain dynamics could be considered , such as the
generative effective connectivity as proposed by Kringelbach and colleagues46, or violations from the
fluctuation-dissipation theorem proposed by Deco and colleagues56.
In summary , the present work broadens our understanding of the link between temporal
asymmetry in information flow and the organisation of distributed function and the impact of
psychedelics on brain dynamics, as well as the interplay between local changes and the architecture
of whole-brain directed functional organisation.
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Methods
In this section we provide all the details of the empirical neuroimaging data for all the three datasets
used in this study.
Participants
DMT: The full description of the dataset can be accessed in (Timmerman et al. 2021,2023). Twenty-
five participants were considered for the experiment in a single -blind, placebo -controlled, and
counter-balanced design. To be considered the participants were required to be older than 18 years of
age, lack experience with a psychedelic, not have a previous negative response to a psychedelic and/or
to currently suffer from or have a history of psychiatric or physical illness. Twenty participants
completed the entire study (average age = 33.5 years, SD = 7.9, 7 female). Seventeen participants
were used in the analysis after further removal of three participants due to excessive motion during
the 8 minutes DMT recording (more than 15% of volumes scrubbed with fra mewise displacement
(FD) of 0.4 mm).
LSD: The full description of the dataset can be accessed in (Carhart-Harris, Muthukumaraswamy, et
al., 2016). Twenty healthy participants were considered for the experiment (four females, average
age = 30.9 Β± 7.8 years) in balanced order, within -participants design. To be considered the
participants were required to be older than 21 years of age, not pregnant, to not have personal history
of diagnosed psychiatric illness, to not have immediate family history of a psychotic disorder, to not
have previous experience with other classical psychedelic drugs, to not have any psychedelic drug
use within six weeks of the first scanning day, pregnancy, to not have problematic alcohol use (i.e.,
>40 units consumed per week), or a medically significant condition. Fifteen subjects were considered
for the current analysis. Fifteen participants were used in the a nalysis after a further removal of one
participant due to scanner anxiety and of four participants due to excessive motion during the
recording (more than 15% of volumes scrubbed with framewise displacement (FD) of 0.5 mm).
Psilocybin: The full description of the dataset can be accessed in (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012). Fifteen
participants were considered for the experiment in a counter -balanced design. To be considered the
participants were required to be older than twenty -one years of age, not be pregnant, not to have a
history of psychiatric disorders, not to have a cardiovascular disease, not to have a substance
dependence, not to have a claustrophobia, not to have a blood or needle phobia, or to have an adverse
response to hallucinogens. Furthermore, six participants were excluded if they exceeded 0.4 mm of
the mean framewise displacement
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Experimental Paradigm
DMT: Every participant underwent two days of scanning, separated by two weeks, with two scanning
sessions in each day. The first scanβs duration was twenty-eight minutes in an eyes-closed condition
(with an eye-mask). The eighth minute marked administration of the intravenous DMT or placebo
(saline) (50/50, DMT/Placebo). Subjective effects assessment was carried out after the scanning. For
the second session the same protocol was carried but with the assessment of subjective intensity
scores. Furthermore, simultaneous EEG was recorded during the sessions.
LSD: Every participant underwent three scanning sessions. The scan duration was carried out after
sixty minutes acclimatization period from the bolus injections (over 2 minutes) with LSD (75 ΞΌg in
10 ml saline). Three fMRI scans were carried out: rest 1 - eyes-closed resting-state session, rest 2 -
resting-state session while listening to music, rest 3 - eyes-closed resting-state session. After each
scan Visual Analog Scale (VAS) rating was carried out for each participant. We report results for the
average of resting state one and resting state three scans.
Psilocybin: Every participant underwent two days of scanning, separated by minimum of one week.
The scan duration lasted twelve minutes with six minutes of recording followed by intravenous
administration of either psilocybin (2 mg dissolved in 10 mL of saline, 60 -s injection) or a placebo
(10 mL of saline, 60 -s injection) in an eyes -closed condition. After each scan Visual Analog Scale
(VAS) rating was carried out for each participant.
Acquisition Parameters
DMT: A 3T scanner (Siemens Magnetom Verio syngo MR 12 with compatibility for EEG recording)
was used for the experiment with T2 -weighted echo planar sequence and T1 -weighted structural
scans. Relevant to the analysis in this paper, the scanning parameters were: TR/TE = 2000ms/30ms,
acquisition time = 28.06 minutes, flip angle = 80o, voxel size = 3x3x3 mm3 and 35 slices with 0 mm
interslice distance.
LSD: A 3T scanner (GE HDx system) was used for the experiment. High -resolution anatomical
images were acquired with 3D fast spoiled gradient echo scans in an axial orientation, with a field of
view = 256 Γ 256 Γ 192 and matrix = 256 Γ 256 Γ 129 to yield 1 -mm isotropic voxel resolution.
TR/TE = 7.9/3.0 ms; inversion time = 450 ms; flip angle = 20. BOLD -weighted fMRI data were
acquired using a gradient-echo planar imaging sequence, TR/TE = 2,000/35 ms, field of view = 220
mm, 64 Γ 64 acquisition matrix, paral lel acceleration factor = 2, 90 flip angles. Thirty -five oblique
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axial slices were acquired interleaved, each 3.4 mm thick with zero slice gap (3.4 -mm isotropic
voxels). The precise length of each of the scans was 7 min 20 s.
Psilocybin: Identical acquisition was carried out for the psilocybin dataset with the following
exceptions: fMRI data were acquired at TR/TE = 3,000/35 ms, field of view = 192 mm. Thirty-three
oblique axial slices were acquired interleaved, each 3 mm thick with zero slice gap (3 Γ 3 Γ 3 mm
voxels). The length of the scan was 97 TRs.
fMRI Pre-processing
For fMRI pre-processing, a pipeline developed for Psilocybin (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012) and further
applied to LSD (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016) and DMT (Timmermann et al. 2023) experiments was
used. Briefly, the following steps were applied 1) despikin g, 2) slice -timing correction, 3) motion
correction, 4) brain extraction, 5) rigid body registration to structural scans, 6) non-linear registration
to 2mm MNI brain, 7) motion -correction scrubbing, 8) spatial -smoothing (FWHM) of 6 mm, 9)
bandpass filtering into the frequency range 0.01 -0.08 Hz, 10) linear and quadratic detrending, 11)
regression of 9 nuisance regressors (3 translations, 3 rotations and 3 anatomical signals). Lastly, the
timeseries were parcellated into the Schaefer parcellation of different scales (100, 200, 300, 400, 500
and 1000) in the MNI space.
Temporal asymmetry
We consider two signals π₯π(π‘) and π₯π(π‘). First, we define the (directed) predictive connectivity
matrix,
π·ππ(π) = |πΆπΆ(π₯π(π‘), π₯π(π‘ + π))| β |πΆπΆ(π₯π(π‘), π₯π(π‘ + π))|
where πΆπΆ(Β·,Β·) denotes the Pearson correlation coefficient between the two time series. This
expression compares how well the present state of π₯π(π‘) predicts the future state π₯π(π‘ + π) versus how
well the present state of π₯π(π‘) predicts the future state π₯π(π‘ + π). If π·ππ(π) > 0, it suggests that π₯π(π‘)
provides more predictive information about π₯π(π‘ + π) than vice versa, indicating a forward direction
of information flow from π₯π to π₯π. If π·ππ(π) < 0, it suggests the opposite direction, and if π·ππ(π) β 0,
no clear directional bias is discerned. By using the symmetry property of circular cross-correlations,
we can rewrite π·ππ(π) as
π·ππ(π) = |πΆπΆ(π₯π(π‘), π₯π(π‘ + π))| β |πΆπΆ(π₯π(π‘), π₯π(π‘ β π))|.
This alternate form shows that π·ππ(π) directly measures how the correlation changes when we shift
π₯π forward in time by π seconds versus shifting it backward by π seconds, relative to π₯π(π‘).
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We now define the magnitude of temporal (or thermodynamic) asymmetry matrix as the square
value of π·ππ(π).
πΌππ(π) = (π·ππ(π))
2
.
If the signals are perfectly time -symmetric, shifting one signal forward or backward by π seconds
yields the same correlation with the other, making πΌππ(π) = 0. A nonzero value indicates that the
correlation depends on the direction of the time shift, revealing a βbreakβ in temporal symmetry. In
other words, πΌππ(π) quantifies how differently the two signals correlate when looking forward versus
backward in time, helping to identify processes where the flow of information or causal influence is
not symmetric with respect to time.
Finally, we quantify the (scalar) magnitude of this asymmetry using the Fano factor F, which is
obtained as the ratio between the mean and standard deviations of all entries in the πΌππ(π):
πΉ =
ππΌ
ππΌ
(3)
Where ππ΄ and ππ΄ are the mean and standard deviation of the magnitude of temporal asymmetry
matrix entries, respectively.
Functional gradient organisation of temporal asymmetry
Functional gradients of temporal asymmetry of information flow were calculated using the
BrainSpace toolbox https://github.com/MICA-MNI/BrainSpace26 as implemented in MATLAB. The
input is the magnitude of temporal asymmetry matrix πΌππ obtained for each condition in each dataset
represented by a ππ₯π matrices, where π is the number of brain regions within the parcellation.
We initialized the algorithm with βnormalized angle β kernel, β principal component analysis β
approach and βProcrustes analysisβ alignment. This resulted in the following steps of the algorithm:
First, each row of the temporal asymmetry matrix πΌππ was thresholded to retain the top 10% of
connections, reflecting the strongest magnitudes of temporal asymmetry for each region .
Subsequently, the cosine similarity was computed between the connectivity profiles of d ifferent
regions to construct a similarity matrix, denoted as π. Cosine similarity quantifies the similarity
between two vectors by measuring the cosine of the angle between them, e ffectively capturing the
similarity in their connectivity patterns. The cosine similarity between two vectors π’Μ
and π£Μ
is defined
as:
ππππ πππ π ππππππππ‘π¦ = cos(π) = π’Μ
β π£Μ
βπ’Μ
ββπ£Μ
β = β π’π β π£π
π
π=1
ββ π’π
2π
π=1 β ββ π£π
2π
π=1
where π’Μ
β π£Μ
denotes the dot product of π’Μ
and π£Μ
, and βπ’Μ
β and βπ£Μ
β represent their magnitudes. This
similarity matrix π is square and symmetric, encoding the similarity between regions in terms of their
temporal asymmetry patterns. Given that a symmetric matrix π can be decomposed as π = πΞ£ππ,
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where π is an orthogonal matrix of eigenvectors and Ξ£ is a diagonal matrix of eigenvalues, we
employed principal component analysis (PCA) for dimensionality reduction. PCA is a linear
technique that transforms the data into a low -dimensional space defined by orthogonal components
that maximize variance. For each dataset, gradient analysis was performed on the averaged magnitude
of the temporal asymmetry matrix. Individual subjectsβ matrices were then projected onto the
principal components using Procrustes alignment, as facilitated by the BrainSpace toolbox26.
This dimensionality reduction technique aims to uncover a meaningful low -dimensional
representation of the high -dimensional original space (in this case, 400 brain regions from the
Schaefer 400 parcellation). In this reduced space, the proximity of two points indicates a similar
pattern of temporal asymmetry between two regions, whereas greater separation signifies di ffering
patterns. Each gradient represents an axis of covariance in the similarity between regional patterns of
temporal asymmetry. Regions with strong loadings on a particular gradient anchor that gradient,
while regions with minimal loadings do not exhibit the associated pattern of varia tion. Notably, for
each condition and subject, these anchor points may di ffer. The greater the disparity between
minimum and maximum anchor points, the more pronounced the pattern of temporal asymmetry
along the gradients.
To assess these variations, we quantified how the maximum and minimum values along the first
two gradients change in the different conditions by measuring the distance between the two extremes
for each gradient named βgradient 1 and 2 surfaceβ. Lastly, we quantified the βgradients re shapingβ
as the mean Euclidean distance traversed by individual regions in the 2 -dimensional embedding of
the first two gradients between the pre- and post-intervention conditions.
Author Contributions
J.V., Y.S -P., G.D. and M.L.K. conceived the analysis. R.L.C -H designed the original study. J.V.,
Y.S-P., G.D. and M.L.K. designed and developed the methodologies. J.V. analysed the data. C.T. and
L.R. acquired and provided the data. J.V., Y.S-P., R.L.C-H, E.T., E.L-S., E.G-G., G.R. revised the
paper and provided critical feedback.
Funding
Jakub Vohryzek is supported by EU H2020 FET Proactive project Neurotwin grant Agreement No.
101017716. Yonatan Sanz -Perl is supported by βERDF A way of making Europe,β ERDF, EU,
Project NEurological MEchanismS of Injury, and Sleep -like cellular dynamics (NE MESIS; ref.
101071900) funded by the EU ERC Synergy Horizon Europe. Morten L. Kringelbach is supported
by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant: CAREGIVING (615539), Pettit Foundation,
Carlsberg Foundation, and Center for Music in the 910 Brain , funded by the Danish National
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Research Foundation (DNRF117). Gustavo 911 Deco is supported by the Spanish Research Project
PSI2016-75688-P (Agencia 912 Estatal de InvestigaciΓ³n/Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional,
European Union); 913 by the European Unionβs Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme
914 under Grant Agreements 720270 (Human Brain Project [HBP] SGA1) and 785907 915 (HBP
SGA2); and by the Catalan Agency for Management of University and 916 Research Grants
Programme 2017 SGR 1545. Giulio Ruffini and Edmundo Lopez-Sola are partially funded by the
European Commission under European Unionβs Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
Grant Number 101017716 (Neurotwin) and European Research Council (ERC Synergy Galvani)
under the European Unionβs Horizon 2020 research and innovation program Grant Number (855109).
Conflict of Interest
G.R., E.L-S. work for Neuroelectrics, a company developing brain stimulation solutions. R.L.C-H.
is an advisor to Otsuka, MindState, and Entheos Labs.
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